THE STORY OF THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY, AND OTHER SKETCHES

BY

DAVID STARR JORDAN

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY

SAN FRANCISCO

THE WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY (INCORPORATED)

1896

COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY

DAVID STARR JORDAN

TO MY WIFE, JESSIE KNIGHT JORDAN. 

PREFATORY NOTE. 

This volume is made up of separate sketches, historical or allegorical, having in some degree a bond of union in the idea of "the highersacrifice. "

I am under obligations to Professor William R. Dudley for the use of aphotograph of a record of Father Serra. This was secured through thekindness of the late Father Casanova, of Monterey. 

PALO ALTO, CAL. , June 1, 1896. 

 CONTENTS. 

 THE STORY OF THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY THIS STORY OF THE PASSION THE CALIFORNIA OF THE PADRE THE CONQUEST OF JUPITER PEN THE LAST OF THE PURITANS A KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF POETS NATURE-STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE THE HIGHER SACRIFICE THE BUBBLES OF SÁKI

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Peter Rendl as Saint John

Johann Zwink as Judas

Rosa Lang as Mary

"Ecce Homo!"

A Record of Junípero Serra

Mission of San Antonio de Pádua

Mission of San Antonio de Pádua--Interior of Chapel

Mission of San Antonio de Pádua--Side of Chapel, with the Old Pear-trees

The Great Saint Bernard

Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard

Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard--in Winter

Jupitère (Great Saint Bernard Dog)

Monks of the Great Saint Bernard

Saint Bernard and the Demon

John Brown

The John Brown Homestead, North Elba, N. Y. 

John Brown's Grave

Ulrich Von Hutten

Ulrich Zwingli

 _Men told me, Lord, it was a vale of tears Where Thou hast placed me, wickedness and woe My twain companions whereso I might go; That I through ten and threescore weary years Should stumble on beset by pains and fears, Fierce conflict round me, passions hot within, Enjoyment brief and fatal but in sin. When all was ended then should I demand Full compensation from thine austere hand: For, 'tis thy pleasure, all temptation past, To be not just but generous at last. _

 _Lord, here am I, my threescore years and ten All counted to the full; I've fought thy fight, Crossed thy dark valleys, scaled thy rocks' harsh height, Borne all the burdens Thou dost lay on men With hand unsparing threescore years and ten. Before Thee now I make my claim, O Lord, -- What shall I pray Thee as a meet reward?_

 _I ask for nothing. Let the balance fall! All that I am or know or may confess But swells the weight of mine indebtedness; Burdens and sorrows stand transfigured all; Thy hand's rude buffet turns to a caress, For Love, with all the rest. Thou gavest me here, And Love is Heaven's very atmosphere, Lo, I have dwelt with Thee, Lord. Let me die. I could no more through all eternity. _

THE STORY OF THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 

There was once a great mountain which rose from the shore of the sea, and on its flanks it bore a mighty forest. Beyond the crest of themountain were ridges and valleys, peaks and chasms, springs andtorrents. Farther on lay a sandy desert, which stretched itsmonotonous breadth to the shore of a wide, swift river. What laybeyond the river no one knew, because its shores were always hid inazure mist. 

Year by year there came up from the shore of the sea an InnumerableCompany. Each one must cross the mountain and the forest, faringonward toward the desert and the river. And this was one condition ofthe journey--that whosoever came to the river must breast its watersalone. Why this was so, no one could tell; nor did any one know aughtof the land beyond. For of the multitude who had crossed the river notone had ever returned. 

As time went on there came to be paths through the forest. Those whowent first left traces to serve as guides for those coming after. Someput marks on the trees; some built little cairns of stones to show theway they had taken in going around great rocks. Those who followedfound these marks and added to them. And many of the travelers leftlittle charts which showed where the cliffs and chasms were and by whatmeans one could reach the hidden springs. So in time it came to passthat there was scarcely a tree on the mountain which bore not sometraveler's mark; there was scarcely a rock that had not a cairn ofstones upon it. 

In early times there was One who came up from the sea and made thejourney over the mountain and across the desert by a way so fair thatthe memory of it became a part of the story of the forest. Men spoketo each other of his way, and many wished to find it out, that haplythey might walk therein. He, too, had left a Chart, which those whofollowed him had carefully kept, and from which they had drawn help inmany times of need. 

The way he went was not the shortest way, nor was it the easiest. Theways that are short and easy lead not over the mountain. But his wasthe most _repaying_ way. It led by the noblest trees, the fairestoutlooks, the sweetest springs, the greenest pastures, and the shadowof great rocks in the desert. And the chart of his way which he leftwas very simple and very plain--easy to understand. Even a child mightuse it. And, indeed, there were many children who did so. 

On this chart were the chief landmarks of the region--the mountain withits forest, the desert with its green oases, the paths to the hiddensprings. But there were not many details. The old cairns were notmarked upon it, and when two paths led alike over the mountain, therewas no sign to show that one was to be taken rather than the other. Not much was said as to what food one should take, or what raiment oneshould wear, or by what means one should defend himself. But therewere many simple directions as to how one should act on the road, andby what signs he should know the right path. One ought to look upward, and not downward; to look forward, and not backward; to be always readyto give a helping hand to his neighbor: and whomsoever one meets isone's neighbor, he said. 

As to the desert, one need not dread it; nor should one fear the river, for the lands beyond it were sweet and fair. Moreover, one shouldlearn to know the forest, that he might choose his course wisely. Andthis knowledge each one should seek for himself. For, as he said, "Ifthe blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. "

There were many who followed his way and gave heed to his precepts. The path seemed dangerous at times, especially at the outset; for itlay along dizzy heights, through tangled underwood, and across swollentorrents. But after a while all these were left behind. The waypassed on between cleft rocks, into green pastures, and by stillwaters; and in the desert were sweet springs which gave forthabundantly. 

But some who tried to follow him said that his Chart was not explicitenough. Every step in the journey, they contended, should be laid outexactly; for to travel safely one should never be left in doubt. 

Now, it chanced that on the slope of the mountain there was a hugegranite rock, which stood in the midst of the way. Some of thetravelers passed to the right of it, while others turned to the left. Strangely enough, the Chart said nothing concerning this rock. No hintwas given as to how one should pass by it. 

When they came to the rock, many of the travelers took counsel one ofanother, and at last a great multitude was gathered there. Which wayhad he taken? For in the path he took they must surely go. Manyscanned the rock on every side, to find if haply he had left somesecret mark upon it. But they found none; or, rather, no one couldconvince the others that the hidden marks he found were intended fortheir guidance. 

At nightfall, after much discussion, the old men in the council gavetheir decision. The safe way led to the right. So he who kept theChart marked upon it the place of the rock, and he wrote upon the Chartthat the one true path leads to the right. Henceforth each man shouldknow the way he must go. 

Moreover, those who bore the records showed that this decision wasjustified. They wrote upon the Chart a long argument, chain upon chainand reason upon reason, to prove that from the beginning it was decreedthat by this rock should the destiny of man be tested. 

But in spite of argument, there were still some who chose the left-handpath because they verily believed that this was the only right way. They, too, justified their course by arguments, line upon line andprecept upon precept. And each band tried to make its following aslarge as it could. Some men stood all day by the side of the rock, urging people to come with them to the right or to the left. For, strangely enough, although each man had his own journey to make, andmust cross the river at last alone, he was eager that all others shouldgo along with him. 

And as each band grew larger, its members took pride in the growth ofits numbers. In the larger bands, trumpets were blown, harps weresounded, and banners were waved in the wind. Those who walked shoulderto shoulder under waving flags to the sound of trumpets felt secure andconfident, while those who journeyed alone seemed always to walk withfear and trembling. It was said in the old Chart that where two orthree were gathered together on the way, strength and courage would begiven them. But men could not believe this, and few had the heart totest whether it were true or no. 

So the bands went on to the right or to the left, each in its chosenpath. But after they had passed the first great rock, they came toother rocks and trees and places of doubt. Other councils were held, and at each step there were some who would not abide by the decision ofthe elders. So these from time to time went their own ways. And theymade new inscriptions on the Chart, and erased the old ones, eachaccording to his own ideas. And there was much pushing and jostlingwhen the bands separated themselves one from another. 

At last one of the oldest travelers in the largest band--a man with along white beard, and wise with the experience of years--arose and saidthat not in anger, nor in strife, should they journey on. Discord andcontention arise from difference of opinion. Let all men but thinkalike, and they will walk in peace and harmony. Let each band choose aleader. Let him carry the Chart, and let him night and day pore overits precepts. No one else need distress himself. One had only to keepstep on the road, and to follow whithersoever the leader might direct. 

So the people chose a leader--a man grave and serious, wise in the loreof the forest and the desert. He noted on the Chart each rock andtree, drawing in sharp outlines every detail in the only safe path. Moreover, all deviating trails he marked with the symbol of danger. 

And it came to pass that day by day other bands followed, and to themthe Chart was given as he had left it. And these bands, too, choseleaders, whose part it was to interpret the Chart. But each one ofthese added to the Chart some better way of his own, some short cut hehad found, or some new trail not marked with the proper sign of warning. 

And with all these changes and additions, as time went on, the true waybecame very hard to find. At one point, so the story is told, therewere twenty-nine distinct paths, leading in as many directions; each ofthese, if the Chart be true, came to its end in some frightful chasm. With these there was a single narrow trail that led to safety; but notwo leaders could agree as to which was the right trail. One thingonly was certain: the true way was very hard to find, and no travelermight discover it unaided. 

And some declared that the Chart was complicated beyond all need. There was one who said, "The multiplication of non-essentials hasbecome the bane of the forest. " Even a little meadow which he hadfound, and which he called the "Saints' Rest, " was so entangled inpaths and counterpaths that once out of sight of it one could neverfind it again. 

All this time there were many bands that wandered about in circles, finding everywhere cairns of stones, but no way of escape. Stillothers remained day after day in the shadow of great rocks, disputingand doubting as to how they should pass by them. There were argumentsand precedents enough for any course; but arguments and precedents madeno man sure. 

And it came to pass that most travelers followed the band they foundnearest. At last, to join some band became their only care. And theylooked with pity and distrust upon those who traveled alone. 

But the bands all made their way very slowly. No matter how wise theleader, not all were ready to move at once, and not all could keep stepto the sound of even the slowest trumpet. There was often much ado atnightfall over the pitching of the tents, and many were crowded outinto the forest. At times also, in the presence of danger, fear spreadthrough the band, and many of the weaker ones were trampled on andsorely hurt. 

Then, too, as they passed through the rocky defiles, some of them lostsight of the banners, and then the others would wait for them, orperchance leave them behind, to struggle on as best they might withoutchart or guide. 

And there were those who spoke in this wise: "Many paths lead over themountain, and sooner or later all come to the desert and the river. Itdoes not matter where we walk; the question is, How? We cannot knowstep by step the way he went. Let us walk by faith, as he walked. Ifour spirit is like his, we shall not lack for guidance when we come tothe crossing of the ways. " And so they fared on. But many doubtedtheir own promptings. "Tell me, am I right?" each one asked of hisneighbor; and his neighbor asked it again of him. And those who werein doubt followed those who were sure. 

So it came to pass that these who walked by faith likewise gatheredthemselves into great companies, and each company followed some leader. Some of these leaders had the gift of woodcraft, and saw clearly intothe very nature of things. But some were only headstrong, and theseproved to be but blind leaders of the blind. 

Then one said, "We must not be filled with our own conceit, but musthumbly imitate him. We must try to work as he worked; to rest as herested; to sleep as he slept. The deeds we do should be those he did, and those only. For on his Chart he has told us, not the way he wentpast rocks and trees, but the actions with which his days were filled. "Then those who tried to do as he had done, moved by his motives andacting through his deeds, found the way wonderfully easy. The days andthe hours seemed all too short for the joy with which they were filled. 

But, again, there were many who said that his directions were notexplicit enough. The Chart said so little. "That we may make nomistake, " they said, "we must gather ourselves in bands and chooseleaders. We cannot act as he acted unless there is some one to show ushow. "

Thus it came to pass that leaders were chosen who could do everythingthat he had done, in all respects, according to his method. And theyadded to the Chart the record of their own practices--not only that "Hedid thus and so, " but also, "Thus and so he did not do. " "Thus andthus did he eat bread, and thus only. Thus and thus did he loose hissandals. In this way only gave he bread and wine. Here on the way hefasted; there he feasted. At this turn of the road he looked upwardthus, shading his eyes with his hand. Here he anointed his feet; therehis face wore a sad smile. Such was the cut of his coat; of this woodwas his staff; of such a number of words his prayer. " And many werecomforted in the thought that for every turn in the road there was somedefinite thing which he had done, and which they, too, might perform. 

Thus the duties of every moment were fixed. But as the days went onthese duties grew more and more difficult. No one had time to look atthe rocks or trees; no one could cast his eyes over a noble prospect;no one could stop to rest by the sweet fountains or in the refreshingshadows. One could hardly give a moment to such things, lest he shouldoverlook some needful service. 

Then many lost heart, and said that surely he cared not for times andobservances, else he would have said more about them. When he made thejourney, it was his chief reproach that he heeded not these things. With him, ceremony or observance rose directly out of the need for it, each one as the need was felt. To imitate him is to feel as he felt. With him feelings gave rise to word and action. "So will it be withus. It is not for us to imitate him in the fashion of his coat or thecut of his beard. He went over the road giving help and comfort, asthe sun gives light or the flowers shed fragrance, all unconscious ofthe good he did. " And in this wise did many imitate him. They turnedaside the boughs of the trees, that the sunshine of heaven might fallupon their neighbors. And behold, the same sunshine fell upon themalso. They removed the stones from the road, that others might notstumble over them. And others removed the stones from their way also. 

But many were still in doubt and hesitation. The record, they said, was not explicit enough. They counseled together, and gathered inbands, and chose leaders who should tell them how to feel. And theleaders gave close heed to all his feelings and to the times andseasons proper to each. Here he was joyous, and at a signal all thebaud broke into merry laughter. Here he was stern, and the multitudeset its teeth. There he wept, and tears fell like rain frominnumerable eyes. 

As time went on, repeated action made action easy. The springs offeeling were readily troubled. Still each one felt, or tried to feel, all that he should have felt. No one dared admit to his fellows thathis tears were a sham, his joy a pretense, his sadness a lie. Butoften, in the bottom of their hearts, men would confess with real tearsthat they had no genuine feeling there. 

Then the people asked for leaders who could bring out real feelings. And there arose leaders, who, by terrible words, could fill the heartswith fear; by burning words, could stir the embers of zeal; by theintensity of their own passions, could fill the throng with pity, withsorrow, or with indignation. And the multitude hung on their lips; forthey sought for feelings real and not simulated. 

But here again division arose; for not all were touched alike by thosewho had power over the hearts of men. Some followed the leader whomoved them to tears; others chose him who filled them with fear andtrembling. Still others loved to linger in the dark shadow of remorse. Some said that right emotions were roused by loud and ringing tones. Some said that the tones should be sad and sweet. 

Then there were some who said that feelings such as all these were idleand common. When he trod the way of old, it was with radiant eyes andwith uplifted heart. He saw through the veil of clouds to the glorywhich lay beyond. We follow him best when we too are uplifted. Nowand then on the way come to us moments of exultation, when we tread inhis very footsteps. These are the precious moments; then our way ishis way. In the rosy mists of morning, we may behold the glory whichencompassed him. In moments of silent communion in the forest, we mayfeel his peace steal over us. In the gentle rain that falls upon thejust and the unjust, we may know the soft pity of his tears. When thesun declines, its last rays touch with gold the far-off mountain topsbeyond the great river. 

And the uplifting of great moments, filling the souls of men with peacethat passeth understanding, came to many. As they went their way, thispeace fell upon their neighbors also. And no man did aught to makethem afraid. And others sought to go with these, and thus they becamea great band. 

So they chose as their leaders those whose visions were brightest. Andthey made for themselves a banner like the white mist flung out fromthe mountain-tops at the rising of the sun. They spoke much to eachother concerning the white banner and the peace which filled theirsouls. 

But as they journeyed along, the dust of the way dimmed the banner, andthe bright visions one by one faded away. At last they came no more. 

Then the people murmured and called upon the leaders to grant them somebrighter vision, something that all could see and feel at once--somesign by which they might know that they were still in his way. "Causethat a path be opened through the thicket, " they said, "and let a whitedove come forth to lead us on; or, let the mists beyond the river partfor a moment, that we may behold the far country beyond. "

And one of the leaders standing at the head of the column, clothed inthe morning light as with a garment, raised his staff high in the air. The sun's rays fell upon it, touching the morning mists with gold, andthrew across them the long shadow of the upraised staff. The shadowfell far out across the plains, and about it was a halo of brightlight. And all the band looked joyfully at the vision. Adown theslope of the mountain and out into the plain they followed the way ofthe shadow. And all the time the white banner waved at the head of thecolumn. The people said little to one another, but that little was aword of praise and rejoicing. 

But it came to pass, as the day wore on, that the sun rose in the sky, and drew the mists up from the valley. With them vanished the longshadow of the staff, and in its place appeared the sandy plain. Thefeet of the people were sore with the rocks and stones. The air wasthick with dust. Their hearts were uplifted no longer. Instead theywere filled with doubt and distress. 

And the people repined and murmured against their leader. But theleader said that all was well; even in the way he went there had beenstones and hindrances. More than once had he carried a heavy burdenalong a dusty road. But he never doubted nor complained, and so theradiance round about him never faded away. 

But all the more the people clamored for a sign. Let the bright visionof the morning appear to us again. At length, worn with much entreaty, the leader raised once more his staff above his head. The sun at noonfell upon it. But as the people gazed they saw no long line ofradiance stretching out across the plains amid a halo of shining mist. The shadow of the staff was a little shapeless mark upon the sand attheir very feet. 

Then the leader cast his staff away and went by himself alone, sad andsorrowful. That night, as he lay by the roadside, he looked upward tothe clear, calm, honest stars. They seemed to say to him, "See allthings as they really are. This was his way. 'In spirit and in truth'means in the light of no illusion. Not all the visions of mist or ofsunshine can make the journey other than it is. "

So he came to look closely at all things on the road. Day by day heread the lessons of the desert and the mountain. He learned to knowdirections by the growth of the trees. By the perfume of the lilies, he sought out the hidden springs. By the red clouds at evening, heknew that the sky would be fair. By the red light in the morning, hewas warned of the coming storm. And there were many who followed himand his way, though he did not will it so. 

And he taught his companions, saying: "We must seek his way in thenature of the things that abide. To learn this nature of things is thebeginning of wisdom. For day unto day uttereth speech, and night untonight showeth knowledge. The way of nature is solid, substantial, vast, and unchanging. He who walks in it stands secure, as in theshadow of a high tower or as if encompassed by a mighty fortress. Thewisdom of the forest shall be granted to him who seeks for it with calmheart and quiet eye. "

But among his followers there were many who were eager and would hastenon, and although they spoke much of the Nature of Things and of the Lawof the Forest, they were contented with speaking. "The road is long, "they said to themselves, "and the hours are fleeting. " They had notime to contemplate the glory of the heavens. The beauty of the liliesfell on unobservant eyes. For all these things they trusted to thereport of others. The words passed from mouth to mouth, losing ever alittle of their truth. And in this wise the voice of wisdom was turnedto the language of folly. For the nature of things is truth. But noman can find truth except he seek it for himself. And so they faredon, each well or ill, according to the truth to which his way borewitness. 

Meanwhile those who bore the white banner remained long in council. Atlast one remembered that it was written, "Faith without works is dead, being alone. " And it was written again, "Those who follow me in spiritmust follow me in truth. " The essence of truth lies not in thought orfeeling, but must be expressed in deeds. Right feelings follow rightactions. Thus it was with him; thus will it be with us. 

Then they went their way together, doing good to one another. And eachcalled his neighbor "brother"; and some bore cups of cold water, andsome balm for healing; some carried oil and wine and pots of preciousointment. To whomsoever they met they gave help and comfort. Thehungry they fed. The thirsty were given drink. He who had fallen bythe wayside was lifted up and strengthened, and the blessing ofcleanliness was brought to him who lay in filth and shame. Theblessing of him that was ready to perish came upon them, and the heartof the widow sang for joy. 

But soon those who were filled with zeal for good works were gatheredtogether in great bands, and each band wished to magnify its work. Inevery way, to all men who asked, help was given. They searched out thelame and the blind, and brought them that they might perforce behealed. Cup after cup of cold water was given to the little ones, evento those who might bring water for themselves. They cared for thewounded wayfarer long after his wounds were made whole. It was theirjoy to bathe his limbs in oil and wine, or to swathe them in fragrantbands. And the wayfarer ceased to bear his own tent or to seek his ownraiment. What others would do for him, he need not do for himself. And those who did not help themselves lost the power of self-help. Andthose who had helped others overmuch came themselves to need the helpof others. 

At last the number of the helpless became so great that there was noone to serve them. Many waited day after day for the aid that nevercame, and they grew so weak with waiting that they could not take uptheir burdens. The little ones were thrust aside by the strong, and asthe band went on many of them were forgotten and left behind. Theyfainted and fell by the healing springs, because there was no one togive them drink, and they could not help themselves. 

And the burden of the way grew very hard and grievous to bear. Thenthere were those who said that one cannot help another save by leadinghim to help himself. All that is given him must he repay. Sooner orlater each must bear his own burden. Each must make his own waythrough the forest in such manner as he may. 

So they turned back to the old Chart. They would read his words again, that they might be led to better deeds. In these words they found helpand cheer. These words spake they one to another. They came like rainto a thirsty field, or as balm to a wound, or as good news from a farcountry. And there was wonderful consolation in the thought that forevery step of the way he had spoken the right word. 

So those who knew his words best were chosen as leaders, and greatcompanies followed them. And as band after band passed along, hismessage sounded from one to another. His words were ever on theirlips. Those who could run swiftly carried them far and wide, even intothe depths of the forest. To those who were in sorrow they came asglad tidings of great joy, and beautiful upon the mountains seemed thefeet of those who bore them. Wherever men were weary and heavy laden, they were cheered by his promise of rest. 

But there were some who turned to his message only to gratify sordidhopes or vain desires. He who was lazy sought warrant for sleep. Hewho was covetous looked for gain. He who was filled with anger soughtpromise of vengeance. There were many who repeated his words for themere words' sake. And there were some who used them in disputationsabout the way. And the words of help on the Chart they turned intowords of command. Each one took these commands not to himself alone, but sought to enforce them upon others. "For it is our duty, " theysaid, "to see that no word of his shall be unheeded of any man. " Andmany rose in resistance. And the conflicts on the way were fierce andstrong; for with each different band there was diversity ofinterpretation. Thus the words of kindness became the voice of hate. 

And it came to pass that all along the way the green sward was red withthe blood of wayfarers. Everywhere the leaves of the forest weretrampled by struggling hosts. And "In his name" was the watchword ofeach warring band. And each band called itself "his army. " Andwhosoever bore the sword that was reddest, they called the "Defender ofthe Faith. " They placed his name upon their battle-flags, and beneathit they wrote these fearful words, "In this sign, conquer. " And eachwent forth to conquer his neighbor, and the wayfarer fled from thesight of their banners as from a pestilence. But "Conquer, conquer, "was no word of his. He spoke not of victory over others; only ofconquest of oneself. He had said, "Resist not, but overcome evil withgood. " And till all men ceased to resist and ceased to conquer, no onefound himself in the right way. Then some one said: "By words alonecan no one truly follow him. His words without his faith and love arelike sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. Out of the abundance of theheart the mouth speaketh. When the heart is empty the speech of themouth is idle as the crackling of thorns beneath a pot. "

And there appeared other bands from the number of those who had passedto the right of the first great rock; and seeing the tumult andconfusion of the others, they said to themselves: "These are they whofollowed not us. We have chosen the better part. Our leader bears theonly perfect Chart. All other charts are the invention of men. In theright Chart there can be nothing false; in the others there can benothing true. Those who have not the true Chart can never go right, not even for a moment. For even good deeds done in the paths of evilmust partake of the nature of sin. Straight is the way and narrow isthe gate, but there is no safety except ye walk therein. "

So they went on, stumbling ever along the rocky road, never resting, never murmuring. "For the way at best is a vale of tears, " said they, "and no one would have it otherwise. He found it thus in his time. Hewas ever a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. More than allothers had he suffered. It was his glory to be despised and rejectedof men. For the greater the abasement the greater the exaltation inthe land beyond the river. " So day by day they walked in the hardestpart of the road. But they spoke often together of a land of puredelight, of sweet fields beyond the swelling floods, and of turf softas velvet that rose from the river's bank. 

If perchance on the way they came to green pastures, they would hastenon, lest they should be tempted to rest before the day of rest wascome. From sweet springs they turned aside, that theirs might be thegreater satisfaction when they came to the sweetest springs of all. They shut their eyes to beauty and their ears to music, that the lightand music of the unknown shore might burst upon them as a suddenrevelation. They looked not at the stars, lest perchance these shoulddeclare a glory which was reserved for other days. Dreary and harshwas the way they trod. But in its very dreariness they found safety. They sought no pleasure, they fought no battles, they wasted no time. In the pushing aside of all temptation, the scorn of all beauty andidleness, they found delight. Against the strength of granite rockthey set the force of iron will. Withal, at the bottom their heartswere light with the certainty of coming joy. Even the multitude ofconflicting paths gave them a peculiar satisfaction; for whatever waythey took was always the right way. 

But there were some among them who lost all heart. And they threwtheir charts away and set forth in disorder through the forest and upthe mountain. Some of them came safely to the river, far in advance ofthe bands they had left behind. But to most the way was strange, andharder than of old. And as the journey wore on they began to hate theforest and all its ways. 

So they fared on, together or apart, in ever-deepening shadow. Theydistrusted their neighbors. They despised the joyous bands who troopedafter their leaders with mouthing of verses and waving of flags. Theywere stirred by the sound of no trumpet. They were deceived by noillusion of sunshine or of mist. They said: "We know the forest; noone knows it but ourselves. There is no future; there is no way; thereis no rest; there is no better country. The azure mists are shadowsonly, hiding some dreary plain, if haply they hide anything at all. Evil is man; evil are all things about him. Love and joy, hope andfaith, all these are but flickering lights that lure him todestruction. Vultures croak on the rocks. The fountains flow withink. Danger lurks in the desert. The name of the river is Death. "And when they came to the shore of the river they saw no rift in theclouds above it, for their eyes were filled with gloom. 

But as time passed on, the way of man grew brighter, whether he wouldor no. No day nor hour was without its joy to him who opened his heartto receive it. And men saw that most of the difficulties and dangersof the way were those which they unwittingly had made for themselves orfor others. Thus, as the road became more secure, it no longer seemeddreary or lonely. 

And so it came to pass at last that men ceased to gather themselves ingreat bands. Nor did they longer set store on the sound of trumpets orthe waving of flags. The men who were wisest ceased to be leaders ofhosts. They became teachers and helpers instead. 

And with all this a sure way was from day to day not hard to find. Menfell into it naturally and unconsciously. And the ways which are safeare innumerable as the multitude of those that may walk therein. 

And those who had gone by diverse paths came from time to timetogether. Each praised the charms of the path he had taken, but eachone knew that in other paths other men found as great delight. And astime went on many wise men passed over the way, and each in his ownfashion left a record of all that had come to him. 

But the old Chart men kept in ever-increasing reverence. They foundthat its simple, honest words were words of truth, and whoso sought fortruth gained with it courage and strength. But they covered it nolonger with their own additions and interpretations. Nor did any oneinsist that what he found helpful to himself should be law unto others. No longer did men say to one another, "This path have I taken; this waymust thou go. "

And some one wrote upon the Chart this single rule of the forest:"Choose thou thine own best way, and help thy neighbor to find that waywhich for him is best. " But this was erased at last; for beneath itthey found the older, plainer words, which One in earlier times hadwritten there, "_Thy neighbor as thyself. _"

THE STORY OF THE PASSION. 

The Alps are not confined to Switzerland. They fill that littlecountry full and overflow in all directions, into Austria, Italy, Germany, and France. Beautiful everywhere, these mountains are nowheremore charming than in Southern Bavaria. Grass-carpeted valleys, lakesas blue as the sky above them, dark slopes of pine and fir, over-toppedby crags of gray limestone dashed by perpetual snow, the BavarianOberland is one of the most delightful regions in all Europe. WhenAttila and the Huns invaded Germany fifteen centuries ago, it is saidthat their cry was, "On to Bavaria--on to Bavaria! for there dwells theLord God himself!"

In the heart of these mountains, shut off from the highways of travelby great walls of rock, lies the valley of the little river Ammer. Itswaters are cold and clear, for they flow from mountain springs, and itswillow-shaded eddies are full of trout. At first a brawling torrent, its current grows more gentle as the valley widens and the rocksrecede, and at last the little river flows quietly with broad windingsthrough meadows carpeted with flowers. On these meadows, a couple ofmiles apart, lie the twin villages of the Ammer Valley--the oneworld-famous, the other unheard of beyond the sound of itschurch-bells--Ober and Unter Ammergau. 

Long, straggling, Swiss-like towns, these villages on the Ammer meadowsare. You may find a hundred such between Innsbruck and Zürich. Stonehouses, plastered outside and painted white, stand close together, eachone passing gradually backward into woodshed, barn, and stable. Youmay lose your way in the narrow, crooked streets, as purposeless intheir direction as the footsteps of the cows who first surveyed them. 

Oberammergau is a cleaner town than most, with a handsomer church, anda general evidence of local pride and modest prosperity. Frescoes onthe walls of the houses here and there, paintings of saints and angels, bear witness to a love of beauty and to the prevalence of a religiousspirit. These pictures, still bright after more than a century's wear, go back to the time when the peasant boy, Franz Zwink, of Oberammergau, mixed paints for a famous artist who painted the interior of the EttalMonastery and the village church. The boy learned the art as well asthe process, and when his master was gone, he covered the walls of hisnative town with pictures such as made men famous in other times and inother lands. The spirit of the Italian masters was his, and the workof Zwink at Oberammergau has been called "a wandering wave from themighty sea of the Renaissance which has broken on a far-off coast. "

The Passion Play at Oberammergau has been characterized as a relic ofmedieval times--the last remains of the old Miracle Play. This istrue, in the sense of historical continuity, and in that sense alone. The spirit of the times has penetrated even to this isolated valley, and its Passion Play is as much a product of our century as the poetryof Tennyson. Miracle Plays were shown at Oberammergau and in the townabout it more than five hundred years ago, but the Passion Play ofto-day is not like them. The imps and devils and all the machinery ofsuperstition are gone. Harmony has taken the place of crudity, and theChrist of Oberammergau is the Christ of modern conception. The MiraclePlay, dead or dying everywhere else, has lived and been perfected atOberammergau. 

It has been pre-eminently the work of the Church of Rome to teach thecommon people, and to train them to obedience. In its teaching it hasmade use of every means which could serve its purposes. Didacticteaching is not effective with tired and sleepy peasants. Sermonssoothe, rather than instruct, after a week of hard labor in the fields. Hence comes the need of object-teaching, if teaching is to be real. 

Images have been used in this way in the Catholic Church--not asobjects to be worshiped, but as representations of sacred things. Paintings have served the same purpose. The noblest paintings in theworld have been wrought to this end. It was in such lines alone thatart could find worthy recognition. In like manner, processions and"Passion[1] Plays" have served the same purpose. 

The old Miracle Plays were grotesque enough--made by common people forthe instruction of common people. Even amid the pathos of divinesuffering the peasants must be amused. Care was taken that thecharacter of Judas should meet this demand. So Judas was made at oncea traitor and a clown. His pathway was beset by devils of the mostridiculous sort. And when at last he hung himself on the stage, hisbody burst open, and the long links of sausages which representedintestines were devoured by the imps amid the laughter and delight ofthe peasant audience. Now all this has passed away. Wise and learnedmen have taken the play in hand, and have left it a monument to theirpiety and good taste. Everything grotesque, or barbarous, orridiculous has been eliminated. All else is subordinated to a faithfuland artistic representation of the life and acts of Christ. Statelyprose and the language of the Gospel narratives have been substitutedfor doggerel verse. As a work of art, the Passion Play deserves a highplace in the literature of Germany. 

One striking feature of the Passion Play is the absence ofsuperstitious elements. Beyond the dominating influence of the purposeof God, which is brought into strong prominence, there is almostnothing which suggests the supernatural or miraculous. That littleeven is forgotten in the intensity of human interest. The Devil andhis machinations have vanished entirely. One sees in the religiouscustoms of the people of Oberammergau few of the superstitions commonamong the peasant classes of other parts of Europe. In his littlebook, "Oberammergau und Seine Bewohner, " Pastor Daisenberger says:"Superstitious beliefs and customs one does not find here. " Even theordinary ghost-stories and traditions of Germany are outworn andforgotten in this town. 

In 1634, so the tradition says, the black death came to Oberammergau, and one-tenth of the inhabitants died. The others made a vow, "atrembling vow, breathed in a night of tears, " that if God should staythe plague, they would, on every tenth year, repeat in full, for theedification of the people, the Tragedy of the Passion. Othercommunities might build temples or monasteries, or could undertakepilgrimages; it should be their duty to show "The Way of the Cross. "When this vow was taken, the pestilence ceased, and not another personperished. This was regarded by the people as a visible sign of divineapproval. Thus every tenth year for nearly three centuries, ever sincethe time when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, with varyingfortunes and interruptions, the Passion Play has been represented inOberammergau. 

The play in its present form is essentially the work of Josef AloisDaisenberger, who was for twenty years pastor of the church atOberammergau. In this town he was born in the last year of the lastcentury, and there he died, in 1888, revered and beloved by all whocame near him. 

"I wrote the play, " Pastor Daisenberger said, "for the love of myDivine Redeemer, and with no other object in view than the edificationof the Christian world. "

The first aim of the Passion Play has been the training of the commonpeople. To its various representations came the peasants of Bavaria, Würtemberg, and the Tyrol, on horses, on donkeys, on foot, a long anddifficult journey across mountain-walls and through great forests. Itwas the memory and inspiration of a lifetime to have seen the PassionPlay. 

About forty years ago the tourist world discovered this scene; andsince then, on the decennial year, an ever-increasing interest has beenfelt, an ever-growing stream of travel has been turned toward the AmmerValley. All, prince or peasant, are treated alike by the simple, honest people, and the same preparation is made for the reception ofall. The purpose of the play should be kept in mind in any justcriticism. To have the right to discuss it at all, one must treat itin a spirit of sympathy. 

We came into Oberammergau on Friday, the 1st day of August, 1890, towitness the performance of the Sunday following. The city of Munich, seventy miles away, was crowded with visitors, all bound to the PassionPlay. The express-train of twenty cars which carried us from Munichwas crowded with people from almost every part of the civilized world. 

At Oberau, six miles from Oberammergau, at the foot of the EttalMountain, we left the railway, and there took part in a generalscramble for seats in the carriages. The fine new road winds throughdark pine woods, climbing the hill in long zigzags above wild chasms, past the old monastery of Ettal, and then slowly descends to the softAmmer meadows. The great peak of the Kofel is ever in front, while themain chain of the Bavarian Alps closes the view behind. 

Arrived in the little village, all was bustle and confusion. Thestreets were full of people--some busy in taking care of strangers, others sauntering idly about, as if at a country fair. Young women, inblack bodices and white sleeves, welcomed the visitors at the littleinns or served them in the shops. Everywhere were young men inTyrolese holiday attire--green coats, black slouch hats, with a featheror sprig of Edelweiss in the hat-band, and with trousers, like those ofthe Scottish Highlanders, which end hopelessly beyond the reach ofeither shoes or stockings. Besides the rustics and the tourists, onemet here and there upon the streets men whose grave demeanor and longblack hair resting on their shoulders proclaimed them to be actors inthe Passion Play. 

On Sunday morning we were awakened by the sound of a cannon planted atthe foot of the Kofel, a sharp, conical, towering mountain, some twothousand feet above the town, and bearing on its summit a tall gildedcross. It was cold and rainy, but that made no difference with theaudience or the play. At eight o'clock, when the cannon sounds again, all are in their places, and the play begins. It lasts for eighthours--from eight o'clock in the morning to half-past five in theafternoon, with a single interruption of an hour and a half at noon. The stage is wide and ample. Its central part is covered, but thefront, which represents the fields and the streets of Jerusalem, is inthe open air. This feature lends the play a special charm. On theleft, across the stage, over which the fitful rain-clouds chase oneanother, we can plainly see the long, green slope of Ettal mountain, dotted from bottom to top with herdmen's huts or _châlets_, and on thesummit a tall pine-tree, standing out alone above all its brethren. Onthe other side appear the wild crags of the Kofel, its gilded crossglistening in the sunshine above the morning mists. Swallows fly inand out among the painted palm-trees, their twitter sounding sharplyabove the music of the chorus. The little birds raise their voices tomake themselves heard to each other. 

As the play progresses the intense truthfulness of the people ofOberammergau steadily grows upon us. For many generations the bestintellects and noblest lives in the town have been devoted to the soleend of giving a worthy picture of the life and acts of Christ. Eachgeneration of actors has left this picture more noble than it ever wasbefore. Their work has been wrought in a spirit of serioustruthfulness, which in itself places the Oberammergau stage in a classby itself, above and beyond all other theaters. Everything is real, and stands for what it is. Kings and priests are dressed, not inflimsy tinsel, but in garments such as real kings and priests may haveworn. And so no artificial light or glare of fireworks is needed tomake these costumes effective. And this genuineness enables thesesimple players to produce effects which the richest theaters wouldscarcely dare to undertake; and all this in the open air, in glaringsunshine or in pouring rain. The players themselves can scarcely becalled actors. In their way, they are strong beyond all mere actors, and for this reason--that they do not seem to act. From childhood theyhave grown up in the parts they play. Childish voices learn the solemnmusic of the chorus in the schools, and childish forms mingle in thetriumphal procession in the regular church festivals. All the effectsof accumulated tradition, all the results of years of training tend tomake of them, not actors at all, but living figures of the charactersthey represent. And we can look back over the history of Oberammergau, and see how, through the growth of this purpose of its life, it hascome to be unique among all the towns of Europe. 

Many have wondered that in so small a town there should be so many menof striking personality. The reason for this is to be sought in theoperation of natural selection. In the ordinary German village, thebest men find no career. They go from home to the cities or to foreignlands, in search of the work and influence not to be secured at home. The strongest go, and the dull remain. All, this is reversed atOberammergau. Only the native citizen takes part in the play. Thosewho are stupid or vicious are excluded from it. Not to take part inthe play is to have no reason for remaining in Oberammergau. To bechosen for an important part is the highest honor the people know. Sothe influences at work retain the best and exclude the others. Moreover, the leading families of Oberammergau, the families of Zwink, Lang, Rendl, Mayr, Lechner, Diemer, etc. , are closely related byintermarriage. These people are all of one blood--all of one greatfamily. This family is one of actors, serious, intelligent, devoted, and all these virtues are turned to effect in their acting. 

This work is that of a lifetime. Little boys and girls come on thestage in the arms of the mothers--matrons of Jerusalem. Older boysshout in the rabble and become at last Roman soldiers or servants ofthe High Priest. Still later, the best of them are ranged among theApostles, and the rare genius becomes Pilate, John, Judas, or theChrist. 

In the house of mine host, the chief of the money-changers in thetemple, the eldest daughter was called Magdalena. In 1890, atfourteen, she was leader of the girls in the tableau of the fallingmanna. In 1900, she may, perhaps, become Mary Magdalen, the end inlife which her parents have chosen for her. 

After the cannon sounds, the chorus of guardian spirits(_Schützengeister_) comes forward to make plain by speech or action themeaning of the coming scenes. This chorus is modeled after the chorusin the Greek plays. It is composed of twenty-four singers, the bestthat Oberammergau has, all picturesquely clad in Greek costumes, --whitetunics, trimmed with gold, and over these an outer mantle of some deep, quiet shade, the whole forming a perfect harmony of soft Orientalcolors. Stately and beautiful the chorus is throughout. The timewhich in ordinary theaters is devoted to the arranging of scenes behinda blank curtain is here filled by the songs and recitations of theguardian spirits. Once in the play the chorus appears in black, inkeeping with the dark scenes they come forth to foretell. But at theend the bright robes are resumed, while the play closes with a burst oftriumph from their lips. 

At the beginning of each act, the leader of the singers, the villageschoolmaster, comes forth from the chorus, and the curtain parts, revealing a tableau illustrative of the coming scenes. These tableaux, some thirty or forty in number, are taken from scenes in the OldTestament which are supposed to prefigure acts in the life of Christ. Thus the treachery of Judas is prefigured by the sale of Joseph by hisbrethren. The farewell at Bethany has its type in the mourning bridein the Song of Solomon; the Crucifixion, in the brazen serpent ofMoses. Sometimes the connection between the tableaux and the scenes isnot easily traced; but even then the pictures justify themselves bytheir own beauty. Often five hundred people are brought on the stageat once. These range in size from the tall and patriarchal Moses tochildren of two years. But, old or young, there is never a muscle or afold of garment out of place. The first tableau represents Adam andEve driven from Eden by the angel with the flaming sword. It was noteasy to believe that these figures were real. They were as changelessas wax. They did not even wink. The critic may notice that the handsof the women are large and brown, and the children's faces not freefrom sunburn. But there is no other hint that these exquisite picturesare made up from the village boys and girls, those who on other daysmilk the cows and scrub the floors in the little town. The marvelouslyvaried costumes and the grouping of these tableaux are the work of thedrawing-teacher, Ludwig Lang. Without appearing anywhere in the play, this gifted man makes himself everywhere felt in the delicacy of hisfeeling for harmonies of color. 

At the beginning of the play the leader of the chorus addresses theaudience as friends and brothers who are present for the same reason asthe actors themselves--namely, to assist devoutly at the mystery to beset forth, the story of the redemption of the world. The purpose is, as far as may be, to share the sorrows of the Saviour and to follow himstep by step on the way of his sufferings to the cross and sepulcher. Then comes the prologue, solemnly intoned, of which the most strikingwords are these:

 "Nicht ewig zürnet Er Ich will, so spricht der Herr, Den Tod des Sünders nicht. "

"He will not be angry forever. I, saith the Lord, will not the deathof the sinner. I will forgive him; he shall live, and in my Son'sblood shall be reconciled. "

When its part is finished the chorus retires, and the Passion Playbegins with the entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Far in the distance wehear the music, "Hail to thee, O David's son!" Then follows aseemingly endless procession of men, women, and children who wavepalm-leaves and shout hosannas. One little flaxen-haired girl, dressedin blue, and carrying a long, slender palm-leaf, is especially strikingin her beauty and naturalness. 

At last He comes, riding sidewise upon a beast that seems too small forhis great stature. He is dressed in a purple robe, over which is amantle of rich crimson. Beside him, in red and olive-green, is thegirlish-looking youth, Peter Rendl, who takes the part of Saint John. Behind him follow his disciples, each with the pilgrim's staff. Two ofthese are more conspicuous than the others. One is a white-haired, eager old man, wearing a mantle of olive-green. The other, younger, dark, sullen, and tangle-haired, dressed in a robe of saffron over dullyellow, is the only person in the throng out of harmony with theprevailing joyousness. 

[Illustration: Peter Rendl as Saint John. ]

Followed by the people, who stand apart in reverence as he passes amongthem, Christ approaches the temple. His face is pale, in markedcontrast to his abundant black hair. His expression is serious, oreven care-worn, less mild than in the usual pictures of Jesus, butcertainly in keeping with the scenes of the Passion Play. A fine, strong, masterful man of great stature and immense physical strength isthe wood-carver, Josef Mayr, who now for three successive decades hastaken this part. A man of attractive presence and lofty bearing, onewhom every eye follows as he goes about the town on the round of hisdaily duties, yet simple-hearted and modest, as becomes one who takeson himself not only the dress but the name and figure of the Saviour. 

Essays have been written on "Christus" Mayr and his conception ofJesus, and I can only assent to the general impression. To me it seemsthat Mayr's thought of Christ is one which all must accept. He appearsas "one driven by the Spirit, "--the great mild teacher, the man who canafford to be silent before kings and before mobs, and to whom the painsof Calvary are not more deep than the sorrows of Gethsemane, the manwho comes to do the work of his Father, regardless alike of humanpraise or of human contempt. The great strength of the presentation isthat it brings to the front the essentials of Christ's life and death. There is no suggestion of theological subtleties nor of the ceremoniesof any church. It is simply true and terrible. 

From one of his fellow-actors, I learned this of Josef Mayr. He hasalways been what he is now, a hand-worker ("_gemeiner Arbeiter_") inOberammergau. He has never been away from his native town except once, when he went as a workman to Vienna, and once when, in 1870, the playwas interrupted by the war with France, and Mayr himself was taken intothe army. Out of respect to his art, he was never sent to the front, but kept in the garrison at Munich. When the war was over, and he cameback, in 1871, the grateful villagers resumed the play as their "bestmethod of thanking God who had given them the blessings of victory andpeace. "

Canon Farrar, of Westminster, has given us the best and mostsympathetic account yet published of the various actors. Of Mayr hesaid: "It is no small testimony to the goodness and the ability ofJosef Mayr that in his representation of Christ he does not offend usby a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner theslightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there werethe remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelledto turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether. For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes onlyto give a faithful picture of the events in the Gospel story. "

As the Master enters the temple, he finds that its courts are filledwith a noisy throng of money-changers, peddlers, and dealers in animalsfor sacrifice. He is filled with wrath and indignation. In acommanding tone, he orders them to take their own and leave this holyplace. "There is room enough for trading outside. 'My house, ' thussaith the Lord, 'shall be a house of prayer to all the people. ' Yehave made it a den of thieves. " ("_Zur Räuberhöhle, habt Ihr esgemacht!_")

The peddlers pay no attention to his protest. Then, with a suddenburst of wrath, he breaks upon them, overturning their tables, scattering their gold upon the floor, and beating them with thongs. The animals kept for sacrifice are released. The sheep scamperbackward to the rear of the stage, and escape through the open door. The white doves fly out over the heads of the spectators, and are lostagainst the green slopes of the Kofel. 

The play now follows the Gospel narrative very closely. It is, infact, the Gospel story, with only such changes as fit it for continuouspresentation. Events aside from the current of the story, such as thewedding at Cana and the raising of Lazarus, are omitted. There are fewlong speeches. The leading features of what may be called the plot, the wrath of the money-changers, the fierce hatred of the Pharisees, the avarice of Judas, which makes him their tool, are all sharplyemphasized. 

The next scene introduces us to the High Council of the Jews, and toits leading spirit, Caiaphas. Caiaphas is represented by theburgomaster of the village, Johann Lang. "No medieval pope, " saysCanon Farrar, "could pronounce his sentences with more dignity andverve. He is what has been called 'that terrible creature, the perfectpriest. '" Violent, unforgiving, and harsh, he is the soul of theconspiracy. His strong determination is reflected in the weakmalignity of his colleague, Annas, as well as in the priests andscribes. "While he lives, " Caiaphas says, "there is no peace forIsrael. It is better that one man should die, that the whole nationperish not. "

We next behold Jesus accompanied by his disciples on the road towardthe house of Simon of Bethany. As they walk along, he talks sadly ofhis approaching death. None of them can understand his words; for tothem he has been victorious over all his enemies. "A word from thee, "says Peter, "and they are crushed. " "I see not, " says Thomas, "whythou speakest so often of sorrow and death. Do we not read in theprophets that Christ lives forever? Thou canst not die, for with thypower thou wakest even the dead. " Even John declares that Christ'swords are dark and dismal, while he and his associates use every effortto cheer the Master. 

At the house of Simon of Bethany, Mary Magdalen breaks the costly dishof ointment. Judas, who carries the slender purse of the disciples, isvexed at the waste, and talks of all the good the value of thisointment might have done if given to the poor. 

Very carefully worked out is the character of Judas, represented byJohann Zwink, the miller of Oberammergau, who ten years ago took thepart of Saint John. The people of Oberammergau regard Zwink as themost gifted of all their actors; for he can, they say, play any part. ("_Er spielt alle Rolle. _") Gregor Lechner, who in his younger dayshad the part of Judas, is now Simon of Bethany. Of all the actors ofOberammergau, the people told us, Lechner is the most beloved("_bestens beliebt_"). 

[Illustration: Johann Zwink as Judas. ]

In Zwink's conception, Judas is a man full of ambition, but withoutenthusiasm. He is attracted by the power of Christ, from which heexpects great results. But Christ seems to care little for his ownmighty works. "My mission, " he says, "is not to command, but toserve. " So Judas becomes impatient and dissatisfied. The eagerenthusiasm of Peter and the tender devotion of John alike bore anddisgust him. So the emissaries of Caiaphas find him half-prepared fortheir mission. He admits that he has made a mistake in joining hisfortunes to those of an unpractical and sorrowful prophet who letsgreat opportunities slip from his grasp, and who wastes a fortune inprecious ointment with no more thought than if it had been water. "There has of late been a coolness between him and me, " he confesses. "I am tired, " he says, "of hoping and waiting, with nothing before meexcept poverty, humiliation, perhaps even torture and the prison. " Heis especially ill at ease when the Master speaks of his approachingdeath. "If thou givest up thy life, " he says, "what will become ofus?" And so Judas reasons with himself that he can afford to beprudent. If his Master fail, then he must be a false prophet, andthere is no use in following him. If he succeed, as with his mightypower he can hardly fail to do, then, says Judas, "I will throw myselfat his feet. He is such a good man; never have I seen him cast apenitent away. But I fear to face the Master. His sharp look goesthrough and through me. Still at the most I shall only tell thepriests where my Master is. " And thus the good and bad impulsesstruggle for the mastery, giving to this character the greatest tragicinterest. He visibly shrinks before the words of Christ, "One of youshall betray me. " In the High Council he cringes under the scorchingreproach of Nicodemus. "Dost thou not blush, " Nicodemus says, "to sellthy Lord and Master? This blood-money calls to heaven for revenge. Some day it will burn hot in thine avarice-sunken soul. "

But the High Priest says, "Come, Judas, take the silver, and be a man. "And when the thirty pieces are counted out to him, he cannot resist thetemptation, but clutches them with a miser's grasp and hurries off tointercept the Master on his way through the Garden of Gethsemane. Meanwhile, after a tender farewell from his mother, Christ leaves thehouse of Simon of Bethany, and, with his disciples, takes the road toJerusalem. 

The part of Mary the mother of Christ is admirably taken by Rosa Lang. In dress and mien, she seems to have stepped down from somepicture-frame of Raphael or Murillo. The Mary of Rosa Lang is in everyrespect a worthy companion of Mayr's Christus. 

[Illustration: Rosa Lang as Mary. ]

The various scenes in which the Apostles appear are modeled more orless after the great religious paintings, especially those of theBavarian artist, Albrecht Dürer. The Last Supper is a livingrepresentation of the famous painting of Leonardo da Vinci in therefectory at Milan. Peter and Judas are here brought into sharpcontrast. Next to Christ, is the slender figure of the beloveddisciple. The characters of the different Apostles are placed in boldrelief. We are at once interested in the fine face of Andreas Lang, the Apostle Thomas, critical and questioning, but altogether loyal. The Apostle Philip looks for signs and visions, and would see theFather coming in His glory from the skies, not in the common every-dayscenes of life into which the Master led them. "Have I been so longtime with thee, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?"

Next comes the night scene in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount ofOlives. The tired Apostles rest upon the grassy bank, and one by onethey fall asleep. Even Peter, who is nearest the Master, can keepawake no longer. Christ kneels upon the rocks above the sleepingPeter. "O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. " Helooks back to his disciples. "Are your eyes so heavy that ye cannotwatch? The weight of God's justice lies upon me. The sins of thefallen world weigh me down. O Father, if it is not possible that thishour go by, then may thy holy will be done. "

Suddenly a great tumult is heard. The faint light of the morning isreflected from the clanging armor and from glittering spears. TheApostles are rudely awakened. Judas comes forth and greets the Masterwith a kiss. At this signal, the Master is seized by the soldiers androughly bound. Then he is carried away, first to Annas, and afterwardsto the house of Caiaphas. 

Of the scenes that immediately follow, the most striking is that of thedenial of Peter. Peter, as represented by the sexton of the church, Jacob Hitt, is an old man with a young heart, eager and impulsive. Hedreams of the noble part he will take while standing by the Master'sside before kings and priests, but behaves very humanly when he isbrought face to face with an unexpected test. 

The scenes of the night have crowded thick and fast. The Apostles havebeen scattered by the soldiers. The Master had been bound, and carriedaway they know not whither. Peter had tried to defend him, but wastold to "put away his useless sword. " In forlorn agony Peter and Johnwander about in the dark, seeking news of Jesus. They meet a servantwho tells them that he has been carried before the High Priest, andthat the whole brood of his followers is to be rooted out. 

Near the house of the High Priest Annas we see a sort of inn occupiedby rough soldiers. The night is damp and cold. A maid has kindled afire in the courtyard, and Peter approaches it to warm his hands, and, if possible, to gain some further news of the Master. He hears thesoldiers talking of Malchus, one of their number who had had his earcut off. They boast of what they will do with the culprit, if heshould ever fall into their power. "An ear for an ear, " he hears themsay. Suddenly the maid turns towards Peter and says, "Yes, you, surelyyou were with the Nazarene Jesus. " Peter hesitates. Should heconfess, he would have his own ears cut off, an ear for an ear--andmost likely his head, too, while his body would be thrown out on therubbish heap behind the inn. Peter had said that he would die for theMaster; and so he would on the field of battle, or in any way where hemight have a glorious death. He would die for the Master, but not thenand there. The death of a martyr has its pleasures, no doubt, but notthe death of a dog. 

While Peter stood thus considering these matters, one and then anotherof the servants insisted that he had surely been seen with the NazareneJesus. Again and again Peter refused all knowledge of the Master. When the cock crew once more he had denied his Master thrice. WhilePeter still insisted, the door opened and the Master came forth underthe High Priest's sentence of death. "And the Lord turned and lookedupon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly. " "Oh, Master, " hesays in the play:

 "Oh, Master, how have I fallen! I have denied thee, how can it be possible? Three times denied thee! Oh, thou knowest, Lord, I was resolved to follow thee to death. "

Meanwhile Judas hears the story of what has happened. He is at oncefilled with agony and remorse, for he had not expected it. He was surethat the great power of the Master would bring him through safely atlast. In helpless agony, he rushes before the Council and makes anineffective protest. "No peace for me forevermore; no peace for you, "he says. "The blood of the innocent cries aloud for justice. " He isrepulsed with cold indifference. "Will it or not, " says the HighPriest, "he must die, and it would be well for thee to look out forthyself. "

In fury he cries out, "If he dies, then am I a traitor. May tenthousand devils tear me in pieces! Here, ye bloodhounds, take backyour curse!" And flinging the blood-money at the feet of the priests, he flies from their presence, pursued by the specter of his crime. 

The next scene shows us the field of blood--a wind-swept desert, withone forlorn tree in the foreground. We see the wretched Judas beforethe tree. He tears off his girdle, "a snake, " he calls it, and placesit about his neck, snapping off a branch of the tree in his haste tofasten it. "Here, accursed life, I end thee; let the most miserable ofall fruit hang upon this tree. " In the action we feel that Judas isnot so much wicked as weak. He has little faith and littleimagination, and his folly of avarice hurries him into betrayal. Thosewho see the play feel as the actors feel, that Christ knows theweakness of man. He would have forgiven Judas, just as he forgavePeter. 

In the early morning Christ is brought before Pontius Pilate. TheRoman governor, admirably represented by Thomas Rendl, appears in thebalcony and talks down to Caiaphas, who sends up his accusations fromthe street below. His clear sense of justice makes Pilate at firstmore than a match for the conspirators. With magnificent scorn hetells Caiaphas that he is "astounded at his sudden zeal for Caesar. "Of Christ he says: "He seems to me a wise man--so wise that these darkmen cannot bear the light from his wisdom. " Learning that Jesus isfrom Galilee, he throws the whole matter into the hands of Herod, thegovernor of that province. 

The words of Pilate are very finely spoken. "We marvel, " says onewriter, "how the peasant Rendl learned to bear himself so nobly or toutter the famous question, 'What is truth?' with a certain dreamyinward expression and tone, as though outward circumstances had for theinstant vanished from his mind, and he were alone with his own soul andthe flood of thought raised by the words of Jesus. "

In contrast to Pilate, stands Herod, lazy and voluptuous. He, too, finds nothing of evil in Jesus, whom he supposes to be a clevermagician. "Cause that this hall may become dark, " he says, "or thatthis roll of paper, which is thy sentence of death, shall become aserpent. " He receives Christ in good-natured expectancy, which changesto disgust when he answers him not a word. Herod pronounces him "dumbas a fish, " and, after clothing him in a splendid purple mantle, hesends him away unharmed, with the title of "King of Fools. "

Again Christ is brought before Pilate, who tells Caiaphas plainly thathis accusations mean only his own personal hatred, and that the voiceof the people is but the senseless clamor of the mob set in operationby intrigue. Pilate orders Jesus to be scourged, in the hope that thesight of his noble bearing amid unmerited cruelties may soften thehearts of the people. Nowhere does the noble figure of Mayr appear tobetter advantage than in this scene, where, after a brutalchastisement, scarcely lessened in the presentation on the stage, theRoman soldiers place a cattail flag in his hand and salute him as aking. 

Pilate then brings forth an abandoned wreck of humanity, old Barabbas, the murderer. As Christ stands before them, blood-stained and crownedwith thorns, half in hope and half in irony, Pilate invites them tochoose. "Behold the man, " he said, "a wise teacher whom ye have longhonored, guilty of no evil deed. Jesus or Barabbas, which will yechoose?"

All the more fiercely the mob cries, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

[Illustration: "Ecce Homo!"]

Pilate is puzzled. "I cannot understand these people, " he said. "Buta few days ago, ye followed this man with rejoicing through the streetsof Jerusalem. " The High Priest threatens to appeal to Rome. Pilatefears to face such an appeal. He has little confidence in the favor orthe justice of the Caesar whom he serves. At last he consents to whathe calls "a great wrong in order to avert a greater evil. " He callsfor water, and washes his hands in ostentatious innocence. Finally, ashe signs the verdict of condemnation in wrath and disgust, he breakshis staff of office, and flings the fragments upon the stairs, at thefeet of the priests. 

Next we behold in the foreground of the stage, John and Mary the motherof Jesus, and with them a little group of followers. A tumult isheard, and, in the midst of a great throng of people, we see threecrosses borne by prisoners. Jesus beholds his mother. Suddenly hefaints, under the weight of the cross. The rough soldiers urge him on. Simon of Cyrene, a sturdy passer-by, who is carrying home provisionsfrom the market, is seized by the soldiers and forced to give aid. Atfirst he refuses. "I will not do it, " he says; "I am a free man, andno criminal. " But his indignant protests turn to pity, when he beholdsthe Holy Man of Nazareth. "For the love of thee, " he says, "will Ibear thy cross. Oh, could I make myself thus worthy in thy sight!"

The closing scenes of the Passion Play, associated as they are with allthat has been held sacred by our race for nearly two thousand years, are thrilling beyond comparison. No one can witness them unmoved. Noone can forget the impression made by the living pictures. Insimplicity and reverence, the work is undertaken, and it awakens in thebeholder only corresponding feelings. Every heart, for the time atleast, is stirred to its depths. 

When the curtain rises, two crosses are seen, each in its place. Thecentral cross is not yet raised. The Roman soldiers take their timefor it. "Come, now, " says one of them, "we must put this Jewish kingupon his throne. " So the heavy cross, with its burden, is raised inits place. We see the bloody nails in his hands and feet; and sorealistic is the representation, that the nearest spectator cannot seethat he is not actually nailed to the cross. There is no haste shownin the presentation. The Crucifixion is not a tableau, displayed foran instant and then withdrawn. The scene lasts so long that one feelsa strange sense of surprise when Christus Mayr appears alive again. 

Twenty minutes is the time actually taken for the representation. "Itis hard, " said our landlady, the good Frau Wiedermann, "to be on thecross so long, even if one is not actually nailed to it. It is hardfor the thieves, too, " she said, "as well as for Josef Mayr. "

The thieves themselves deserve a moment's notice. The one on the rightis a bald old man, who meets his death in patience and humility. Theone on the left is a robust young fellow, who defies his associates andtormentors alike, and joins his voice to that of the rabble in scoffingat the power of Jesus. "If thou be a god, " he says, "save thyself andus. " There is at first a struggle over the inscription at the head ofthe cross. "Let it read, 'He called himself the King of the Jews, '"say the priests. But the Roman soldier is obdurate. "What I havewritten I have written, " and the centurion grimly nails it on the crossabove his head, regardless alike of their rage and protestations. 

Meanwhile, in the foreground the four Roman guards part the purple robeof Christ, each one taking his share. But the seamless coat they willnot divide. So they cast the dice on the ground to see to whom thisprize shall fall. They are in no hurry. Traitors and thieves have allnight to die in, and they can wait for them. The first soldier throwsa low number, and gives up the contest. The second does better. Thethird calls up to the cross, "If thou be a god, help me to throw alucky number. " One cast of the dice is disputed. It has to be triedagain. 

Meanwhile we hear the poor dying body on the cross, in a voice brokenwith agony, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. "Again, amid the railings of the Jews, "My God, my God, why hast thouforsaken me?" Then again, after a sharp cry of pain, "It is finished!"

The captain drives the scoffing mob away, bidding the women comenearer. Then a Roman soldier, sent by Pilate, comes and breaks thelegs of the thieves. We hear their bones crack under the club. Theirheads fall, their muscles shrink, as the breath leaves the body. Butfinding that Jesus is already dead, the soldier breaks not his legs, but thrusts a spear into his side. We can see the spear pierce theflesh, but we cannot see that the blood flows from the spear-pointitself, and not from the Master's body. The soldiers fall back with afeeling of awe. Then, one by one, as the darkness falls, we see themfile away on the road to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is left insilence. 

Then follows the descent from the cross, which suggests comparison withRubens' famous painting in the Cathedral at Antwerp, but here shownwith a fineness of touch and delicacy of feeling which that greatpainter of muscles and mantles could never attain. We see Nicodemusclimb the ladder leaned against the back of the cross. He takes offfirst the crown of thorns. It is laid silently at Mary's feet. Hepulls out the nails one by one. We hear them fall upon the ground. With the last one falls the wrench with which he has drawn it. Passinga long roll of white cloth over each arm of the cross, he lets theSaviour down into the strong arms of Joseph of Arimathea, and, at last, into the loving embrace of John and Mary. No description can give anidea of the all-compelling force of this scene. A treatment lessreverent than is given by these peasants would make it an intolerableblasphemy. As it is, its justification is its perfection. 

And this is the justification of the Passion Play itself. It can neverbecome a show. It can never be carried to other countries. It nevercan be given under other circumstances. So long as its players arepure in heart and humble in spirit, so long can they keep theirwell-earned right to show to the world the Tragedy of the Cross. 

[1] The word "passion, " as used in the term "Passionspiel, " signifiesanguish or sorrow. The Passion Play is the story of the great anguish. 

THE CALIFORNIA OF THE PADRE. [1]

There is something in the name of Spain which calls up impressionsrich, warm, and romantic. The "color of romance, " which must besomething between the hue of a purple grape and the red haze of theIndian summer, hangs over everything Spanish. Castles in Spain haveever been the fairest castles, and the banks of the Xenil and theGuadalquivir still bound the dreamland of the poet. 

 "There was never a castle seen So fair as mine in Spain; It stands embowered in green, Overlooking a gentle slope, On a hill by the Xenil's shore. "

It has been said of Spanish rule in California, that its history waswritten upon sand, only to be washed away by the advancing tide ofSaxon civilization. So far as the economic or political development ofour State is concerned, this is true; the Mission period had no part init, and its heroes have left no imperishable monuments. 

But in one respect our Spanish predecessors have had a lastinginfluence, and the debt we owe to them, as yet scarcely appreciated, isone which will grow with the ages. It is said that Father Crespi, in1770, gave Spanish names to every place where he encamped at night, andthese names, rich and melodious, make the map of California uniqueamong the States of the Union. It is fitting that the most varied, picturesque, and lovable of all the States should be the one thusfavored. We feel everywhere the charm of the Spanish language--Latincut loose from scholastic bonds, with a dash of firmness from theVisigoth and a touch of warmth from the sun-loving Moor. The names ofMariposa, San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey cannever grow mean or common. In the counties along the coast, there isscarcely a hill, or stream, or village that does not bear somemelodious trace of Spanish occupation. 

To see what California might have been, we have only to turn away fromthe mission counties to the foothills of the Sierras, where themining-camps of the Anglo-Saxon bear such names as Fiddletown, Red Dog, Dutch Flat, Murder Gulch, Ace of Spades, or Murderer's Bar; thesechanging later, by euphemistic vulgarity, into Ruby City, MagnoliaVale, Largentville, Idlewild, and the like. Or, if not these, ourAnglo-Saxon practically gives us, not Our Lady of the Solitude, nor theCity of the Holy Cross, not Fresno, the ash, nor Mariposa, thebutterfly, but the momentous repetition of Smithvilles, Jonesboroughs, and Brownstowns, which makes the map of the Mississippi Valley a wasteof unpoetical mediocrity. 

So the Spanish names constitute our legacy from the Mission Fathers. It is now nearly three hundred and fifty years since Alta Californiawas discovered, one hundred and twenty years since it was colonized bywhite people, and a little over forty years since it became a part ofour republic. In 1542, Cabrillo had sailed up the coast as far as CapeMendocino. In 1577, Sir Francis Drake came as far north as PointReyes, where, seeing the white cliffs of Marin County, he called thecountry New Albion. Better known than these to Spanish-speaking peoplewas the voyage of Sebastian Vizcaino, who, in 1602, had coasted alongas far as Point Reyes, and had left a full account of his discoveries. The landlocked harbor which Cabrillo had named San Miguel, Vizcainore-christened in honor of his flag-ship, San Diego de Alcalá. Farthernorth, Vizcaino found a glorious deep and sheltered bay, "large enoughto float all the navies of the world, " he said; and this, in honor ofthe Viceroy of Mexico, he called the Bay of Monterey. To a broad curveof the coast to the north, between Point San Pedro and Point Reyes, hegave the name of the Bay of San Francisco, [2] dedicating it to thememory of St. Francis of Assisi. A rough chart of the coast was madeby his pilot, Cabrera Bueno, who left also an account of its leadingfeatures. 

For a hundred and sixty years after Vizcaino's expedition, no use wasmade of his discoveries. In Professor Blackmar's words: "During allthis time, not a European boat cut the surf of the northwest coast; nota foreigner trod the shore of Alta California. The white-wingedgalleon, plying its trade between Acapulco and the Philippines, occasionally passed near enough so that those on board might catchglimpses of the dark timber-line of the mountains of the coast or ofthe curling smoke of the forest fires; but the land was unknown tothem, and the natives pursued their wandering life unmolested. "

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Father Salvatierra, head ofthe Jesuit missions in Lower California, fixed his eye on this region, and made plans for its occupation. In this the good Father Kühn--aGerman from Bavaria, whom the Spaniards knew as "Quino, "--seconded him. But these plans came to naught. The power of the Jesuit order wasbroken; the charge of the missions in Lower California was given to theDominicans, that of Upper California to the Franciscans, and to theseand their associates the colonization of California is due. TheFranciscans, it is said, "were the first white men who came to live anddie in Alta California. "

And this is how it came about. One hundred and thirty years ago, theport of La Paz, in Baja California, lay baking in the sun. La Paz wasthen, as now, a little old town, with narrow, stony streets and adobehouses, standing amidst palms, and chaparral, and cactus. To this portof La Paz came, one eventful day, Don José de Galvez, envoy of the Kingof Spain. He brought orders to the Governor of California, Don Gasparde Portolá, that he should send a vessel in search of the ports of SanDiego and of Monterey, on the supposed island, or peninsula, of UpperCalifornia, once found by Vizcaino, but lost for a century and a half. There they were to establish colonies and missions of the Holy CatholicChurch. They were "to spread the Catholic religion, " said the letter, "among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness ofpaganism, thereby to extend the dominion of the king, our lord, and toprotect this peninsula of California from the ambitious designs of theforeign nations. "

"The land must be fertile for everything, " says Galvez, "for it lies inthe same latitude as Spain. " So they carried all sorts of householdand field utensils, and seeds of every useful plant that grew in Spainand Mexico--the olive and the pomegranate, the grape and the orange, not forgetting the garlic and the pepper. All these were placed in twosmall ships, the San Carlos, under the gallant Captain Vila, and theSan Antonio, under Captain Perez. 

Padre Junípero Serra, chief apostle of these Spanish missions, blessedthe vessels and the flags, commending the whole enterprise to the MostHoly Patriarch San José, who was supposed to feel a special interest inthis class of expeditions. His early flight into Egypt gave him apeculiar fondness for schemes involving foreign travel. Galvezexhorted the soldiers and sailors to respect the priests, and not toquarrel with each other. And thus they sailed away for San Diego inthe winter of 1769. 

At the same time there was organized a land expedition, which shouldcross the sandy deserts and cactus-covered hills and join the vesselsat San Diego. That there should be no risk of failure, Don Gaspar dePortolá divided the land forces into two divisions, one led by himself, the other by Captain Rivera. These two parties were to take differentroutes, so that if one were destroyed the other might accomplish thework. In front of each band were driven a hundred head of cattle, which were to colonize the new territories with their kind. 

Padre Serra went with the land expedition under the command of Portolá. A barefooted friar, clad in a rough cloak confined by a rope at thewaist, looks comfortable enough in the cool shade of an Italiancathedral; but the garb of the Franciscan order is ill-fitted to thepeculiarities of the California mesa. For the vegetation of LowerCalifornia makes up in bristliness what it lacks in luxuriance. Bushcactuses, so prickly that it makes one's eyes smart to look at them, and bunch cactuses, in wads of thorns as large as a bushel-basket, swarm everywhere. Before the barefooted Padre had traveled far, soMiss Graham tells us in her charming little paper on the Spanishmissions, he had made the acquaintance of many species of cactus. Horses in that country become lame sometimes, and people say that theyare "cactus-legged. " And soon Father Serra became "cactus-legged, "too, so that he could neither walk nor ride a mule. The Indians weretherefore obliged to carry him in a litter, for he would not go back toLa Paz. 

But the Father felt great compassion for the Indians, who had enough todo to carry themselves. He prayed fervently for a time, and then, according to the chronicler of the expedition, "He called a mule-driverand said to him: 'Son, do you know some remedy for my foot and leg?'But the mule-driver answered, 'Father, what remedy can I know? Am I asurgeon? I am a mule-driver, and have cured only the sore backs ofbeasts. ' 'Then consider me a beast, ' said the Father, 'and this soreleg to be a sore back, and treat me as you would a mule. ' Then saidthe muleteer, 'I will, Father, to please you, ' and taking a small pieceof tallow, he mashed it between two stones, mixing with it herbs thatgrew close by. Then heating it over the fire, he anointed the foot andleg, and left the plaster upon the sore. 'God wrought in such amanner, ' wrote the Padre Serra afterwards, 'that I slept all thatnight, and awoke so much relieved that I got up and said matins andprime, and afterwards mass, as if nothing had happened. '"

But Father Serra did not show his faith by such simple miracles asthese alone. In one of his revival meetings in Mexico, Bancroft tellsus, he was beating himself with a chain in punishment for his imaginaryoffenses, when a man seized the chain and beat himself to death as amiserable sinner, in the presence of the people. At another time, sixty persons who neglected to attend his meetings were killed by anepidemic, and the disease went on, killing one after another, until thepeople had been scared into attention to their religious duties. Then, at a sign from Padre Serra, the plague abated. 

At one time the good Padre was well lodged and entertained in a veryneat wayside cottage on a desolate and solitary road. Later he learnedthat there was no such cottage in that region, and, we are told, heconcluded that his entertainers were Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. 

Suffering greatly from thirst on one of his journeys, he said to hiscompanions, who were complaining: "The best way to prevent thirst is toeat little and talk less. " In a violent storm he was perfectly calm, and the storm ceased instantly when a saint chosen by lot had beenaddressed in prayer. And so on; for miracles like these are constantaccompaniments of a mind wholly given over to religious enthusiasm. 

In due season, Padre Serra and his party arrived at San Diego, havingfollowed the barren and dreary coast of Lower California for threehundred and sixty miles, often carrying water for great distances, andas often impeded by winter rains. The boats and the other party werealready there, and in the valley to the north of the _mesa_, on thebanks of the little San Diego River, they founded the first mission inCalifornia. 

Within a fortnight of Serra's arrival at San Diego, a special landexpedition set out in search of Vizcaino's lost port of Monterey. Theexpedition, under Don Gaspar de Portolá, was unhappy in some respects, though fortunate in others--unhappy, for after wandering about in theCoast Range for six months, the soldiers returned to San Diego, weary, half-starved, and disgusted, failing altogether, as they supposed, tofind Monterey; fortunate, for it was their luck to discover the farmore important Bay of San Francisco. It seems evident, from theresearches of John T. Doyle and others, that the company of Portolá, from the hills above what is now Redwood City, were the first white mento behold the present Bay of San Francisco. The journal of MiguelCostanzo, a civil engineer with Portolá's command, is still preservedin the Sutro Library in San Francisco, and Costanzo's map of the coasthas been published. The diary of Father Crespi, who accompaniedPortolá, has also been printed. 

The little company went along the coast from San Diego northward, meeting many Indians on the way, and having various adventures withthem. In the pretty valley which they named San Juan Capistrano, theyfound the Indian men dressed in suits of paint, the women in bearskins. On the site of the present town of Santa Ana, which they called Jesusde los Temblores, they met terrific earthquakes day and night. At LosAngeles, they celebrated the feast of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels(Nuestra Señora, Reina de Los Angeles), from which the valley took thename it still bears. They passed up the broad valley of San FernandoRey, and crossed the mountains to the present village of Saugus. Thence they went down the Santa Clara River to San Buenaventura andSanta Barbara, their route coinciding with that of the presentrailroad. Above San Buenaventura they found Indians living in huts ofsagebrush. At Santa Barbara, the Indians fed on excellent fish, butplayed the flute at night so persistently that Portolá and his soldierscould not sleep for the music. They next passed Point Concepcion, andcrossed the picturesque Santa Ynez and the fertile Arroyo Grande to thebasin-shaped valley of San Luis Obispo, with its row of four conicalmountains. At the last of these, Moro Rock, they reached the seaagain. Above Piedras Blancas, where the rugged cliffs of the SantaLucia crowd down to the ocean, they were blocked, and could go nofarther. Crossing the mountains to the east, they followed NacimientoCreek to below Paso Robles, then went down the dusty valley of theSalinas, past the pastures on which the missions of San Miguel andSoledad were later planted. Below Soledad, they came again to the sea. They then went along the shore to the westward, past the present siteof Monterey and Pacific Grove, and on to the Point of Pines itself, thesouthern border of the Bay of Monterey. Yet not one of them recognizedthe bay or any of the landmarks described by Vizcaino. At the Point ofPines, they were greatly disheartened, because they could nowhere finda trace of the Bay of Monterey, or of any other bay which wassheltered, or on which "the navies of the world could ride. " FatherCrespi celebrated here "the Feast of Our Father in the New World";"or, " he adds, "perhaps in a corner of the Old World, without any otherchurch or choir than a desert. " Portolá offered to return, but Crespisaid: "Let us continue our journey until we find the harbor ofMonterey; if it be God's will, we will die fulfilling our duty to Godand our country. " So they crossed the Salinas again, and wentnorthward along the shore of the very bay they had sought so long. Then they came to another river, where they killed a great eagle, whosewings spread nine feet and three inches. They called this riverPajaro, which means "bird, " and devoutly added to it the name of SaintAnne, "Rio del Pajaro de Santa Ana. " To the memory of this bird, thePájaro River still remains dedicated. Farther on, they came to forestsof redwood--"_Palo Colorado_, " they called it. Crespi describes thetrees "as very high, resembling cedars of Lebanon, but not of the samecolor; the leaves different, and the wood very brittle. "

[Illustration: A Record of Junípero Serra. ]

At Santa Cruz, on the San Lorenzo River, they encamped, still bewailingtheir inability to find Monterey Bay. Going northward, along the coastpast Pescadero and Halfmoon Bay, they saw the great headland of PointSan Pedro. They called it Point Guardian Angel (Angel Custodio), andfrom its heights they could clearly see Point Reyes and the chalk-whiteislands of the Farallones. These landmarks they recognized from thecharts of Cabrera Bueno. Crespi says: "Scarce had we ascended thehill, when we perceived a vast bay formed by a great projection of landextending out to sea. We see six or seven islands, white, anddiffering in size. Following the coast toward the north, we canperceive a wide, deep cut, and northwest we see the opening of a baywhich seems to go inside the land. At these signs, we come torecognize this harbor. It is that of our Father St. Francis, and thatof Monterey we have left behind. " "But some, " he adds, "cannot believeyet that we have left behind us the harbor of Monterey, and that we arein that of San Francisco. "

But the "Harbor of San Francisco, " as indicated by Cabrera Bueno, layquite outside the Golden Gate, in the curve between Point San Pedro onthe south, and Point Reyes on the north. The existence of the GoldenGate, and the landlocked waters within, forming what is now known asSan Francisco Bay, was not suspected by any of the early explorers. The high coast line, the rolling breakers, and, perhaps, the banks offog, had hidden the Golden Gate and the bay from Cabrillo, Drake, andVizcaino alike. By chance a few members of Portolá's otherwiseunfortunate expedition discovered the glorious harbor. Some of thesoldiers, led by an officer named Ortega, wandered out on the SierraMorena, east of Point San Pedro. When they reached the summit andlooked eastward, an entirely new prospect was spread out before them. From the foothills of these mountains, they saw a great arm of theocean--"a mediterranean sea, " they termed it, according to Mr. Doyle'saccount, "with a fair and extensive valley bordering it, rich andfertile--a paradise compared with the country they had been passingover. " They rushed back to the seashore, waving their hats andshouting. Then the whole party crossed over from Halfmoon Bay into thevalley of San Mateo Creek. Thence they turned to the south to goaround the head of the bay, passing first over into the Cañada delRaymundo, which skirts the foot of the mountain. Soon they came downthe "Bear Gulch" to San Francisquito Creek, at the point whereSearsville once stood, before the great Potolá Reservoir covered itstraces and destroyed its old landmark, the Portolá Tavern. Theyentered what is now the University Campus, on which columns ofascending smoke showed the presence of many camps of Indians. TheseIndians were not friendly. The expedition was out of provisions, andmany of its members were sick from eating acorns. There seemed to beno limit to the extension of the Estero de San Francisco. At last, indespair, but against the wishes of Portolá, they decided to return toSan Diego. They encamped on San Francisquito Creek, and crossed thehills again to Halfmoon Bay. Then they went down the coast by PointAño Nuevo, to Santa Cruz. At the Point of Pines they spent two weeks, searching again everywhere for the Bay of Monterey. 

At last they decided that Vizcaino's description must have been toohighly colored, or else that the Bay of Monterey must, since his time, have been filled up with silt or destroyed by some earthquake. At anyrate, the bay between Santa Cruz and the Point of Pines was the onlyMonterey they could find. According to Washburn, Vizcaino's accountwas far from a correct one. It was no fault of Portolá and Crespithat, after spending a month on its shores, it never occurred to themto recognize the bay. 

On the Point of Pines they erected a large wooden cross, and carved onit the words: "Dig at the foot of this and you will find a writing. "

According to Crespi this is what was written:

"The overland expedition which left San Diego on the 14th of July, 1769, under the command of Don Gaspar de Portolá, Governor ofCalifornia, reached the channel of Santa Barbara on the 9th of August, and passed Point Concepcion on the 27th of the same month. It arrivedat the Sierra de Santa Lucia on the 13th of September; entered thatrange of mountains on the 17th of the same month, and emerged from iton the 1st of October; on the same day caught sight of Point Pinos, andthe harbors on its north and south sides, without discovering anyindications or landmarks of the Bay of Monterey. We determined to pushon farther in search of it, and on the 30th of October got sight ofPoint Reyes and the Farallones, at the Bay of San Francisco, which areseven in number. The expedition strove to reach Point Reyes, but washindered by an immense arm of the sea, which, extending to a greatdistance inland, compelled them to make an enormous circuit for thatpurpose. In consequence of this and other difficulties--the greatestof all being the absolute want of food, --the expedition was compelledto turn back, believing that they must have passed the harbor ofMonterey without discovering it. We started on return from the Bay ofSan Francisco on the 11th of November; passed Point Año Nuevo on the19th, and reached this point and harbor of Pinos on the 27th of thesame month. From that date until the present 9th of December, we haveused every effort to find the Bay of Monterey, searching the coast, notwithstanding its ruggedness, far and wide, but in vain. At last, undeceived and despairing of finding it, after so many efforts, sufferings, and labors, and having left of all our provisions butfourteen small sacks of flour, we leave this place to-day for SanDiego. I beg of Almighty God to guide us; and for you, traveler, whomay read this, that He may guide you also, to the harbor of eternalsalvation. 

"Done, in this harbor of Pinos, the 9th of December, 1769. 

"If the commanders of the schooners, either the San José or thePrincipe, should reach this place within a few days after this date, onlearning the accounts of this writing, and of the distressed conditionof this expedition, we beseech them to follow the coast down closelytoward San Diego, so that if we should be happy enough to catch sightof them, we may be able to apprize them by signals, flags, and firearmsof the place where help and provisions may reach us. "

The next day the whole party started back to San Diego, making thejourney fairly well, in spite of illness and lack of proper food. Though disappointed at Portolá's failure, Serra had no idea ofabandoning his project of founding a mission at Monterey. He madefurther preparations, and in about three months after Portolá's returna newly organized expedition left San Diego. It consisted of twodivisions, one by land, again commanded by Portolá, and one by sea. This time the good Father wisely chose for himself to go by sea, andembarked on the San Antonio, which was the only ship he had in sailingcondition. In about a month Portolá's land party reached the Point ofPines, and there they found their cross still standing. According toLaura Bride Powers, "great festoons of abalone-shells hung around itsarms, with strings of fish and meat; feathers projected from the top, and bundles of arrows and sticks lay at its base. All this was toappease the stranger gods, and the Indians told them that at nightfallthe terrible cross would stretch its white arms into space, and growskyward higher and higher, till it would touch the stars, then it wouldburst into a blaze and glow throughout the night. "

Suddenly, as they came back through the forest from the Point of Pines, the thought came both to Crespi and Portolá that here, after all, wasthe lost bay of Vizcaino. In this thought they ran over the landmarksof his description, and found all of them, though the harbor was lessimportant than Vizcaino had believed. Since that day no one hasdoubted the existence of the Bay of Monterey. 

A week later, the San Antonio arrived, coming in sight around the Pointof Pines, and was guided to its anchorage by bonfires along the beach. The party landed at the mouth of the little brook which flows down arocky bank to the sea. On the 3rd of June, 1770, Father Serra and hisassociates "took possession of the land in the name of the King ofSpain, hoisting the Spanish flag, pulling out some of the grass andthrowing stones here and there, making formal entry of theproceedings. " On the same day Serra began his mission by erecting across, hanging bells from a tree, and saying mass under the venerableoak where the Carmelite friars accompanying Vizcaino celebrated it in1602. Around this landing grew up the town of Monterey. 

At a point just back from the shore, near the old live-oak tree underwhich the Padre rendered thanks, there has long stood a commemorativecross. On the hill above where the Padre stood looking out over thebeautiful bay, there was placed one hundred and twenty years later, bythe kind interest of a good woman, a noble statue, in gray granite, representing Father Serra as he stepped from his boat. 

A fortress, or presidio, was built, and Monterey was made the capitalof Alta California. But the mission was not located at the town. Itwas placed five miles farther south, where there were better pasturageand shelter. This was on a beautiful slope of the hill, flanked by afertile valley opening out to the glittering sea, with the mountains ofSanta Lucia in front and a great pine forest behind. The valley wasnamed Carmelo, in honor of Vizcaino's Carmelite friars, and the missionwas named for San Carlos Borromeo. 

The present church of Monterey was not a mission church, but the chapelof the _presidio_, or barracks. It is now, according to FatherCasanova, the oldest building in California. The old Mission of SanDiego, first founded of all, was burned by the Indians. It wasafterwards rebuilt, but this took place after the chapel in Montereywas finished. The mission in Carmelo was not completed until later, asthe Padre was obliged to secure authority from Mexico, that he mightplace it on the pasture lands of Carmelo, instead of the sand-hills ofMonterey. 

When the discoveries of Portolá and Ortega had been reported at SanDiego, the shores of this inland sea of San Francisco seemed a mostfavorable station for another mission. Among the missions alreadydedicated to the saints, none had yet been found for the great fatherof the Franciscan order, St. Francis of Assisi, the beloved saint whocould call the birds and who knew the speech of all animals. Beforethis, Father Serra had said to Governor Galvez, "And for our Father St. Francis is there to be no mission?" And Galvez answered, "If St. Francis wants a mission, let him show his port, and we will found themission there. "

And now the lost port of St. Francis was found, and it was the mostbeautiful of all, with the noblest of harbors, and the fairest of viewstoward the hills and the sea. So the new mission was called for him, the Mission San Francisco de los Dolores. For the Creek Dolores, the"brook of sorrows, " flowed by the mission, and gave it part of itsname. But Dolores stream is long since obliterated, forming part ofthe sewage system of San Francisco. [3]

Thus was founded

 "that wondrous city, now apostate to the creed, O'er whose youthful walls the Padre saw the angel's golden reed. "

Meanwhile, following San Diego de Alcalá and San Carlos Borromeo, along series of missions was established, each one bearing the sonorousSpanish name of some saint or archangel, each in some beautiful sunnyvalley, half-hidden by oaks, and each a day's ride distant from thenext. In the most charming nook of the Santa Lucia Mountains was builtSan Antonio de Pádua; in the finest open pastures of the Coast Range, San Luis Obispo de Tolosa. In the rich valley, above the city of theQueen of the Angels, the beautiful church of San Gabriel Arcángel wasdedicated to the leader of the hosts of heaven. Later, came themagnificent San Juan Capistrano, ruined by earthquakes in 1812. In itsgarden still stands the largest pepper-tree in Southern California. 

Then Santa Clara was built in the center of the fairest valley of theState. Next came San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara, for the coastIndians of the south, and Santa Cruz, for those to the north ofMonterey Bay. In the Salinas Valley, along the "_Camino real_, " orroyal highway, from the south to the north, were built Nuestra Señorade la Soledad and San Miguel Arcángel. A day's journey from Carmelo, in the valley of the Pájaro, arose San Juan Bautista. In the charmingvalley of Santa Ynez, still hidden from the tourist, a day's journeyapart, were Santa Ynez and La Purisima Concepcion. East of the Bay ofSan Francisco, in a nook famous for vineyards, arose the Mission SanJosé. 

[Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua. ]

In the broad, rocky pastures above Los Angeles, arose San Fernando Keyde Espana, while midway between San Diego and San Juan Capistrano wasplaced the stateliest of all the missions, dedicated, with its richriver valley, to the memory of San Luis Rey de Francia. Finally, tothe north of San Francisco Bay, was built San Rafael, small, butcharmingly situated, and then San Francisco Solano, still farther on inSonoma. This, the northernmost outpost of the saints, the last, weakest, and smallest, was first to die. It was founded in 1823, fiftyyears after the Mission San Diego. 

Wherever you find in California a warm, sunny valley leading from theocean back to the purple mountains, with a clear stream in its midst, and filled in summer with blue haze, around it steep slopes on whichgrapes may grow, you have found a mission valley, and these grapes aremission grapes. Somewhere in it you will see a cluster of large, wide-spreading pepper-trees, with delicate light-green foliage, or agrove of gnarled olives, looking like stunted willows, or, perhaps, acluster of old pear-trees, or sometimes a tall palm. Near these youwill find the ruins of old houses of adobe, wherein once dwelt theIndian neophytes. These houses are clustered around the walls, nowalmost in ruins, of the mission itself, which had its chapel, refectory, and baptistry, and in all its details it resembled closely aparish church of Italy of Spain. 

The mission was usually laid out in the form of a hollow square, inclosed by a wall of adobe, twelve feet high, the whole inclosurebeing two or three hundred feet square. In the center of this squarewas a chapel, also of adobe; for the sun of California is kind toCalifornia's children, and a house of dried mud will withstand thescanty rains of a century. Some of these old chapels are still used, but the roofs of most of them have long since fallen in, and theornaments have been removed to decorate some other building. Themission churches were built like mimic cathedrals, cathedrals of mudinstead of marble, and, like their great models, each had its altar, with candles and crucifix, its vessels of holy water, and on the wallsthe inevitable paintings of heaven and purgatory. Their most charmingfeature was the arched cloister, a feature which has been retained andbeautified in the architecture of Leland Stanford Jr. University, atPalo Alto. 

Each church, too, had its little chime of bells, some of which werepartly of gold or silver, as well as of brass. During the earlyenthusiasm, when the mission bells were cast, old heirlooms from Spain, rings, vases, and ancestral goblets from which had been "drunk the redwine of Tarragon, " were thrown into the molten metal. And when theseconsecrated bells chimed out the Angelas at the sunset hour, with thesound of their voices all evil spirits were driven away, and no harmcould come to man or beast or growing grain. 

 "Bells of the past, whose long-forgotten music Still fills the wide expanse, Tingeing the sober twilight of the present With color of romance;

 I hear you call, and see the sun descending On rock and wave and sand, As down the coast the mission voices blending, Girdle the heathen land. 

 "Within the circle of your incantation No blight nor mildew falls, Nor fierce unrest nor sordid low ambition Passes those airy walls. 

 Borne on the swell of your long waves receding I touch the farther past. I see the dying glow of Spanish glory, The sunset dream and last. 

 * * * * * *

 "Your voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still, And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending, The sun sinks from the hill. " [4]

Around the church were built storehouses, workshops, granaries, barracks for the soldiers, --in short, everything necessary for comfortand security. Each mission was at once fortress, refuge, church, andtown. The little town grew in time more and more to resemble itsfellows in old Spain. Bull-fights and other festivals were held in the_plaza_, or public square, in front of the _presidio_, or governor'shouse, and the long, low, whitewashed _hacienda_, or tavern. 

About the mission arose a great farm. Vines and olives were planted, and often long avenues of shade-trees. The level lands were sown tobarley and oats; great herds of cattle and horses roamed over thehills. The sale of wine, and especially of hides, brought in each yearan increasing revenue. The poor, struggling missions became rich. Thecommanders kept up a dignity worthy of the representatives of theSpanish king, though often they had little enough to command. It issaid that one of them, wishing to fire a salute in honor of someforeign vessel, first sent on board to borrow powder. In the words ofBret Harte, with the _comandante_ the days "slipped by in a deliciousmonotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. Theregularly recurring feasts and saint's days, the half-yearly courierfrom San Diego, the rare transport ship, and rarer foreign vessels, were the mere details of his patriarchal life. If there was noachievement, there was certainly no failure. Abundant harvests andpatient industry amply supplied the wants of the _presidio_ andmission. Isolated from the family of nations, the wars which shook theworld concerned them not so much as the last earthquake; the strugglethat emancipated their sister colonies on the other side of thecontinent had to them no suggestiveness. It was that glorious Indiansummer of California history, that bland, indolent autumn of Spanishrule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexicanindependence and the reviving spring of American conquest. "

[Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua--Interior of Chapel. ]

The Indians were usually gathered about the mission by force or bypersuasion. Being baptized with holy water, they were taught to buildhouses, raise grain, and take care of cattle. In place of their savagerites, they learned to count their beads and say their prayers. Theylearned also to work, and were pious and generally contented. Butthese California Indians, at the best, were far inferior to those ofthe East. "When attached to the mission, " Mr. Soulé says, "they werean industrious, contented, and numerous class, though, indeed, inintelligence and manly spirit they were little better than the beasts, after all. "

The Jesuit Father, Venegas, remarks, discouragingly: "It is not easyfor Europeans who were never out of their own country to conceive anadequate idea of these people. Even in the least frequented quartersof the globe there is not a nation so stupid, of such contracted ideas, and weak, both in body and in mind, as the unhappy Californians. Theircharacteristics are stupidity and insensibility, want of knowledge andreflection, inconstancy, impetuosity, and blindness of appetite, excessive sloth, abhorrence of all fatigue of every kind, howevertrifling or brutal, --in fine, a most wretched want of everything whichconstitutes the real man and makes him rational, inventive, tractable, and useful to himself and others. " All of which goes to show thatclimate is not everything, and that contact with other minds and otherpeople, with the sifting that rigorous conditions enforce, may outweighall the advantages of the fairest climate. The highest developmentcomes with the fewest barriers to migration, to competition, and to thespread of ideas. 

The destruction of the missions and the advent of our Anglo-Saxonfreedom has been for the Indian and his kind only loss and wrong. Hehas become an alien and tramp, with his half-brother, the despisedGreaser. 

The mission fathers left no place for idleness on the part of theirconverts, or "neophytes"; nor did they make much provision for thedevelopment of the individual. The Indians were to work, and to workhard and steadily, for the glory of the church and the prosperity ofthe nation. In return they were insured from all harm in this worldand in the world to come. The rule of the Padre was often severe, sometimes cruel, but not demoralizing, and the Indians reached a highergrade of industry and civilization than the same race has attainedotherwise before or since. 

Believing that the use of the rod was necessary to the Indians'salvation, the Padres were in no danger of sparing it, and thusspoiling their children. The good Father Serra would as "soon havedoubted his right to breathe as his right to flog the Indian converts";and meek and quiet though these converts usually were, there were notwanting times when they turned about in sullen resistance. The annalsof some of the missions show a series of events that may well havediscouraged the most enthusiastic of missionaries. The unconvertedIndians, or "gentiles, " of Southern California were heathens indeed, and they made repeated attacks upon the missions by day, or stole theirstock or burned their houses by night. Volleys of arrows notunfrequently greeted the priests on their return from morning mass. 

In San Diego, faith in the power of gunpowder to hurt long preceded anybelief in the power of the cross to save. For a whole year after themission was founded, not a convert was made. The sole San Diego Indianin Father Serra's service was a hired interpreter, who did not have aparticle of reverence for his employer's work. "In all thesemissionary annals of the Northwest, " says Bancroft, "there is no otherinstance where paganism remained so long stubborn as in San Diego. "

And the converts made at such cost of threats and promises were alwaysready to backslide. It was hard to convert any unless they subjugatedall. The influence of the many outside would often stampede the fewwithin the fold. 

In one of the numerous uprisings at San Diego the Fathers werevictorious over the Indians; the warriors were flogged, and thusconverted, and their four chiefs were condemned to death. The sentenceof death, according to Bancroft, read as follows:

"Deeming it useful to the service of God, the king, and the publicgood, I sentence them to a violent death by musket shots, on the 11thof April, at 9 A. M. , the troops to be present at the execution, underarms; and also all the Christian rancherias subject to the San DiegoMission, that they may be warned to act righteously. "

To the priests who were to assist at the last sacrament, the followinggrim directions was given:

"You will co-operate for the good of their souls, in the understandingthat if they do not accept the salutary waters of holy baptism, theydie on Saturday morning; and if they do accept, they die all the same. "

The character of the first great mission chief, Junípero Serra, is thussummed up by Bancroft:

"All his energy and enthusiasm were directed to the performance of hismissionary duties as outlined in the regulations of his order and theinstruction of his superiors. Limping from mission to mission, with alame foot that must never be cured, fasting much and passing sleeplessnights, depriving himself of comfortable clothing and nutritious food, he felt that he was imitating the saints and martyrs who were theideals of his sickly boyhood, and in recompense of abstinence he washappy. He was kind-hearted and charitable to all, but most strict inhis enforcement of religious duties. It never occurred to him to doubthis absolute right to flog his neophytes for any slight negligence inmatters of the faith. His holy desires trembled within him likeearthquake throbs. In his eyes there was but one object worth livingfor--the performance of religious duty; and but one way to accomplishthat object--a strict and literal compliance with Franciscan rules. Hecould never understand that there was anything beyond the narrow fieldof his vision. He could apply religious enthusiasm to practicalaffairs. Because he was a grand missionary, he was none the less amoney-maker and civilizer; but money-making and civilizing wereadjuncts only to mission work, and all not for his glory, but for theglory of God. "

After Junípero Serra came a saner and wiser, if not a better, man, thePadre Fermin Lasuen. I need not go into details in regard to him orhis life. No miracles followed his path, and no saint made him theobject of spectacular intervention; but his gentle earnestness countedfor more in the development of Old California than that of any otherman. Of Lasuen, Bancroft says:

"In him were united the qualities that make up the ideal Padre, withouttaint of hypocrisy or cant. He was a frank, kind-hearted old man, whomade friends of all he met. Of his fervent piety there are abundantproofs, and his piety and humility were of an agreeable type, unobtrusive, and blended with common sense. He overcame obstacles inthe way of duty, but he created no obstacles for the mere sake ofsurmounting them. He was not a man to limp through life on a sore legif a cure could be found. . . . First among the Californian prelateslet us ever rank Fermin de Lasuen, as a friar who rose above hisenvironment and lived many years in advance of his times. "

Thirteen years after the serene founding of the Mission San Franciscocame the first shock to the community, thus noticed in a letter fromthe governor of the territory to the _comandante_ at San Francisco:

"Whenever there may arrive at the Port of San Francisco a ship namedthe Columbia, said to belong to General Washington, of the AmericanStates, commanded by John Kendrick, which sailed from Boston inSeptember, 1787, bound on a voyage of discovery to the Russianestablishments on the northern coast of this peninsula, you will causethe said vessel to be examined with caution and delicacy, using forthis purpose a small boat which you have in your possession. "

Afterwards another enemy, almost as dangerous as the Yankee, appearedin the shape of Russians from Alaska. They brought down a colony ofKodiak Indians, or Aleuts, and established themselves at Fort Ross, north of San Francisco. The Spaniards then founded the missions of SanRafael and Solano in front of the Russians, to head them off, as thepriest makes the sign of the cross to ward off Satan. Trading with theRussians was forbidden, but, nevertheless, the Russian vessels, on onepretext or another, made repeated visits to the Bay of San Francisco. The Spaniards had no boats in the bay, and could not prevent theingress of the Russian and American traders. One of the singular factsin connection with the missions is that the Padres made no use of thesea, and the missions usually kept no boats at all, and so the Spanishofficials were forced to receive in friendliness many encroachmentswhich they were powerless to prevent. 

In 1842, as the seals grew scarce around Bodegas Head, the Russians, tothe great satisfaction of the Spaniards, disappeared as suddenly asthey came. The joy of the missions was short-lived, for seven yearslater gold was discovered, California was ceded to the United States, and the most remarkable invasion known in history followed. Over themountains, across the plains, by the Isthmus, and by the Horn theycame, that wonderful procession which Bret Harte has made so familiarto us--Truthful James, Tennessee's Partner, Jack Hamlin, John Oakhurst, Flynn of Virginia, Abner Dean of Angels, Brown of Calaveras, Yuba Bill, Sandy McGee, the Scheezicks, the Man of No Account, and all the rest. And the California of the gambler and the gold-seeker succeeds theCalifornia of the Padre. 

Numerous causes had meanwhile contributed to the decline of the Spanishmissions. They had been supported at first by a Pious Fund, obtainedby subscriptions in Mexico and Spain. After the separation of thesetwo countries, this fund was lost, its interest being regularlyembezzled by Mexican officials, and, finally, the principal, it issaid, was taken in one lump by the President, Santa Ana. Still themissions were able to hold their own until the Mexican Governmentremoved the Indians from the control of the Padres, for the benefit, Isuppose, of the "Indian ring. " The secular control of the nativetribes was, in Mexican hands, an utter failure. The Indians, now nolonger compelled to work, no longer well fed and comfortably clothed, were scattered about the country as paupers and tramps. The missions, after repeated interferences of this sort, fell into a rapid decline, and at the time that California was ceded to the United States, not oneof them was in successful operation. A few of the churches are stillpartly occupied, as at San Luis Obispo, San Capistrano, and San Miguel. The Mission of Santa Barbara is still intact, and has yet its littlebands of monks. A few, like San Carlos, have been partially saved orpartially restored, thanks to the loving interest of Father Casanovaand others; but the Indians are gone, and neither wealth nor influenceremains with the missions. Most of them are crumbling ruins, and havealready taken their place as curiosities and relics of the past. Someof them, as the noble San Antonio de Pádua and the stately San LuisRey, are exquisitely beautiful, even in ruins. Of others, as SanRafael, not a trace remains, and its spot can be kept green only inmemory. It is said that at San Antonio, a mission once numberingfourteen hundred souls, and rearing the finest horses in California, the last priest lived all alone for years, and supported himself byraising geese and selling the tiles from the mission roof. When hedied, ten years ago, no one was left to care for his beloved mission, which is rapidly falling into utter decay. 

[Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua--side of the chapel, with the old pear-trees. ]

So faded away the California of the Padre, and left no stain on thepages of our history. 

[1] Address at the Teachers' Institute at Monterey, California, September, 1893. 

[2] This stretch of water, as explained below, lies entirely outside ofwhat is now known as San Francisco Bay. 

[3] The limits of San Francisco Bay, as now understood, wereascertained at the time of the founding of the mission, and the namewas then formally adopted. 

[4] Bret Harte. 

THE CONQUEST OF JUPITER PEN. 

In a cleft of the high Alps stands the Hospice of the Great SaintBernard. Its tall, cold, stone buildings are half-buried in ice in thewinter, while even in summer the winds, dense with snow, shriek andhowl as they make their way through the notch in the mountain. Itslittle lake, cold and dark, frozen solid in winter, is covered withcakes of floating ice under the sky of July. The scanty grass aroundit forms a thick, low turf, which is studded with bodiless bluegentians, primroses, and other Alpine flowers. Overhanging the lakeare the frost-bitten crags of the Mountain of Death; and the othermountains about, though less dismally named, are not more cheerful tothe traveler. Along the lake margin winds the narrow bridle-path, which follows rushing rivulets in zigzags down steep flower-carpetedslopes to the pine woods of Saint Rémy, far below. Among the pines thepath widens to a wagon-road, whence it descends through green pastures, purple with autumnal crocus, past beggarly villages, whose houses crowdtogether, like frightened cattle in a herd, through beech woods, vineyards, and grain-fields, till at last it comes to its rest amid thehigh stone walls of the old city of Aosta, named for Augustus Caesar. Above Aosta are the sources of the river Po, one of the chief of thesebeing the Dora Baltea, in a deep gorge half-hid by chestnut-trees. Itis twenty miles from the lake to the river--twenty miles of wildmountain incline--twenty miles from Switzerland to Italy, from theeternal snows and faint-colored flowers of the frigid zone, to thedust, and glare of the torrid. 

The Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard stands thus in a narrow mountainnotch, with only room for itself and its lake, while above it, oneither side, are jagged heights dashed with snow-banks, their summitsfrosted with eternal ice. 

[Illustration: The Great Saint Bernard. ]

It is a large stone building, three stories high, beside the two atticfloors of the steep, sloping roof. A great square house of cold, graystone, as unattractive as a barn or a woolen-mill, plain, cold, andsolid. At one end of the main building is a stone addition preciselylike the building itself. On the other side of the bridle-path is anoutbuilding--a tall stone shed, "the Hotel of Saint Louis, " threestories high, as plain and uncompromising as the Hospice is. The frontdoor of the main building is on the side away from the lake. From thisdoor down the north side of the mountain the path descends steeply fromthe crest of the Pennine Alps to the valley of the Rhone, even moreswiftly than the path on the south side drops downward to the valley ofthe Po. 

As one approaches the Hospice he is met by a noisy band of great dogs, yellow and white, with the loudest of bass voices, barking incessantly, eager to pull you out of the snow, and finding that you do not needthis sort of rescue, apparently equally eager to tear you to pieces forhaving deceived them. Classical names these dogs still bear--namesworthy of the mountain long sacred to Jupiter, on which the Hospice isbuilt--Jupitère, Junon, Mars, Vulcan, Pluton, the inevitable Leon, andthe indomitable Turc, and all have for the traveler such a greeting asonly a band of big, idle dogs can give. These dogs are not so largenor so well kept as the Saint Bernard dogs we see in American cities, but they have the same great head, huge feet and legs, and the sameintelligent eye, as if they were capable of doing anything if theywould only stop barking long enough to think of something else. 

The inside of the house corresponds to its outer appearance. Thick, heavy triple doors admit you to a cold hall floored with stone. Adjoining this is a parlor, likewise floored with the coldest of stone, and this parlor is used as the dining-room and waiting-room fortravelers. Its walls are hung with pictures, many of them valuableworks of art, the gifts of former guests, while its chilly air isscantily warmed by a small fireplace, on which whoever will may throwpine boughs and fragments of the spongy wood of the fir. By this firethe guests take their turn in getting partly warmed, then pass away toshiver in the outer wastes of the room. 

[Illustration: Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard. ]

In this room the travelers are served with plain repasts, princes andpeasants alike, coarse bread, red wine, coffee, and boiled meat;everything about the table neat and clean, but with no pretense atpampering the appetite. You take whatever you please without money andwithout price. Should you care to pay your way, or care to help on thework of the Hospice, you can leave your mite, be it large or small, ina box near the door of the chapel. The guest-rooms are plain butcomfortable--a few religious pictures on the walls; tall, old-fashionedbedsteads, with abundant feather-beds and warm blankets. For one nightonly all persons who come are welcome. The next day all alike, unlesssick or crippled, must pass on. 

There are about a dozen monks in the Hospice now, all of them youngmen, devoted to their work, and some of them at least intelligent andgenerously educated. The hard climate and the exposure of winterbreaks down their health before they are old. When they become unableto carry on the duties of the Hospice, they are sent down the mountainsto Martigny, while others come up to take their places. There arebeautiful days in the summer-time, but no season of the year is freefrom severity. Even in July and August the ground is half the timewhite with snow. Terrible blasts sweep through the mountains; for thecommonest summer shower in the valleys below is, in these heights, araging snow-storm, and its snow-laden winds are never faced withimpunity. 

We visited the Hospice in July, 1890. We drove from Aosta up to SaintRémy, a little village crowded in on the side of the mountain, wherethe pine-trees cease. The light rain which followed us out from SaintRémy changed to snow as we came up the rocky slopes. By the time wereached the Hospice it became a blinding sleet. The ground was onlywhitened, so that the dogs who came barking to meet us had no need todig us out from the drifts. In this they seemed disappointed, andbarked again. 

Once inside the walls, one cared not to go out. Many travelers came upthe mountain that day. Among them were a man and his wife, Italianpeasants, who had been over the mountains to spend a day or two withfriends in some village on the Swiss side, and were now returning home. Man and woman were dressed in their peasants' best, and with them was alittle girl, some four years old. The child carried a toy horse in herhands, the gift of some friend below. As they toiled up the steep pathin the blinding snow, all of them thinly clad and dressed only forsummer, they seemed chilled through and through, while the child wasalmost frozen. The monks came out to meet them, took the child intheir arms, and brought her and her parents to the fire, covered hershoulders with a warm shawl, and, after feeding them, sent them downthe mountain to their home in the valley, warmed and filled. This wasa simple act, the easiest of all their many duties, but it was a verytouching one. Such duties make up the simple round of their lives. 

In the storms of winter the work of the Hospice takes a sterner cast. From November to May the gales are incessant. The snow piles up inbillows, and in the whirling clouds all traces of human occupation areobliterated. There are many peasants and workingmen who go forth fromItaly into Switzerland and France, and who wish to return home whentheir summer labors are over. To these the pass of the Great SaintBernard is the only route which they can afford. The long railwayrides and the great distances of the Simplon and the Saint Gotthardwould mean the using up of their scanty earnings. If they go home atall, they must trust their lives to the storms and the monks, and takethe path which leads by the Hospice. So they come over day after day, the winter long. No matter how great the storm, the dogs are on thewatch. In the last winter, of the many who came, not one was lost. 

[Illustration: The Hospice in winter. ]

This is the Hospice as it stands to-day. I come next to tell its storyand the story of its founder. I tell it, in the most part, from alittle volume in French, which some modest and nameless monk of theHospice has compiled from the old Latin records of the monks who havegone before him. This volume he has printed, as he says, "for the useof the faithful in the parishes which lie next the Alps, and which, inhis time, the good Saint Bernard[1] passed through. " This story I musttell in his own spirit, in some degree at least, else I should have noright to tell it at all. 

In the tenth century, he informs us, the dark ages of Europe couldscarcely have been darker. Weak and wicked kings, the dregs of theworn-out blood of Charlemagne, misruled France, while along thenorthern coast the Normans robbed and plundered at their will. Eventhe church had her share of crimes and scandals. In this dark time, says the chronicle, "God, who had promised to be with His own to theend of the centuries, did not fail to raise up in that darkness greatsaints who should teach the people to lift their eyes toward heaven; torise above afflictions; not to take the form of the world for apermanent habitation, and to suffer its pains with patience, in theprospect of eternity. "

[Illustration: Jupitére. ]

It happened that in the days of King Raoul, in the Castle of Menthon, on the north bank of the lake of Annécy, in Savoy, in the year 923, Bernard de Menthon was born. His father was the Baron Richard, famousamong the noblemen of the time, while his mother, the Lady Bernoline, was illustrious for virtues. The young Bernard was a fair child, andhis history, as seen from the perspective of his monkish historian, shows that even in his earliest youth he was predestined for saintship. Even before he could walk, the little child would join his hands in theattitude of supplication, and murmur words which might have beenprayers. While still very young, he brought in a book one day andasked his mother to teach him to read, and when she would not, or couldnot, he wept, for the books in which even then he delighted were theprayer-books of the church. 

He grew up bright and beautiful, and his father was proud of him, anddetermined that he should take his part in public life. But Bernard'sthoughts ran in other channels. He spent his moments in copyingpsalms, and in writing down the words of divine service which he heard. Even in his seventh year he began to practice austerities andself-castigation, which he kept up through his life. He chose for hismodel Saint Nicholas, the saint who through the ages has been kind tochildren. Him he resolved to imitate, and to walk always in his steps. 

The University of Paris had been founded by Charlemagne more than acentury before, and this university was then the Mecca of all ambitiousyouth. To the University of Paris his father decided to send him. Buthis mother feared the influence of the gay capital, and wished to keepBernard by her side. But the boy said, "Virtue has too deep a root inmy heart, mother, for the air of Paris to tarnish it. I will bringback more of science, but not less of purity. " And to Paris he went. Here he studied law, to please his father, and theology, to pleasehimself. "As Tobias lived faithful in Nineveh, " so the chronicle says, "thus lived Bernard in Paris. " In the midst of snares unnumbered, heonly redoubled his austerities--"_in sanctitate persistens, studiosusvalde_, " so the record says. 

[Illustration: Monks of the Great Saint Bernard. ]

His thoughts ran on the misery of humanity, which he measured by theabasement to which Christ had submitted in order to effect itsredemption. A great influence in his life came from Germain, histutor, a man who had lived the life of a scholar in the world, and whohad at last withdrawn to sanctity and prayer. Although Bernard knewthat his father expected a brilliant future for him, and that he hopedto effect for him a marriage in some family of the great of those days, yet he took upon himself the vow of celibacy. "God lives in virginsouls, " he said. There is a record of an argument with Germain, inwhich his tutor tries to test the strength of his purpose. Germaintells him that even in a monastery evil cannot be excluded, and thatmany even of the most austere monks live lives of petty jealousy andignoble ambition. "There are many, " Germain says, "who are saved inthe struggle of the world who would be shipwrecked in a monastery. "But Bernard is steadfast in his choice. "Happy are those who havechosen to dwell in God's court, and to sleep on His estate. " Thus dayand night he struggles against all temptations of worldly glory orpleasure. 

Then his father calls him home; and when he has returned to Annécy, Bernard finds that every preparation has been made for his approachingwedding with the daughter of the great Lord of Miolans. "_Sponsapulchra_, " beautiful bride, this young woman was, according to therecord, and doubtless this was true. The attitude of Bernard towardthis marriage his father and mother could not understand. He held backconstantly, and urged all sorts of objections to its immediateconsummation, but on no ground which seemed to them reasonable. So thewedding-day was set. The house was full of guests. Every gate anddoor of the castle was crowded by armed retainers, and there seemed tobe no escape. Bernard retired to his own room, and in the oldestmanuscripts are given the words of his prayer:

"My adorable Creator, Thou who with thy celestial light enlightenedthose who invoke with faith and confidence, and Thou my Jesus, DivineRedeemer of men and Saviour of souls, lend a favorable ear to my humbleprayer; spread on thy servant the treasures of your infinite mercy. Iknow that Thou never abandonest those who place in you their hope;deliver me, I supplicate Thee, from the snares which the world haveoffered me. Break these nets in which the world tries to take me;permit not that the enemy prevail over thy servant, that adulation mayenfeeble my heart. I abandon myself entirely to Thee. I throw myselfinto the arms of thy infinite mercy, hoping that Thou wilt save me, andwilt reject not my demand. "

Then to the good Saint Nicholas:

"Amiable shepherd, faithful guide, holy priest, thou who art myprotector and my refuge, together with God, and His holy mother, thehappy Virgin Mary, obtain me, I pray thee, by thy merits, the grace oftriumph over the obstacles the world opposes to my vow of consecratingmyself to God without reserve--in return for the property, thepleasures, and honors here below, of which I abandon my part, obtain mespiritual good all the course of my life, and eternal happiness aftermy death. "

Then Bernard retired to sleep, and in a dream Saint Nicholas stoodbefore him and uttered these words:

"Bernard, servant of God the Lord, who never betrays those who puttheir confidence in Him, calls thee to follow Him. An immortal crownis reserved for thee. Leave at once thy father's house and go toAosta. There in the cathedral thou shalt meet an old man calledPièrre. He will welcome thee; thou shalt live with him, and he shallteach thee the road thou should traverse. For my part, I shall be thyprotector, and will not for an instant abandon thee. "

Then Bernard opened his eyes and the vision had disappeared. He wasovercome with joy. His resolution was taken. Though he knew no wayout of the castle, nor from the bedroom in the tower, in which he hadbeen locked by his thoughtful father, yet he was ready to go. 

Taking up a pen, he wrote to his father this letter:

"Very dear parents, rejoice with me that the Lord calls me to Hisservice. I follow Him to arrive sooner at the port of salvation, thesole object of my vows. Do not worry about me, nor take the trouble toseek me. I renounce the marriage, which was ever against my will. Irenounce all that concerns the world. All my desires turn towardheaven, whither I would arrive. I take the road this minute. 

"BERNARD DE MENTHON. "

Laying the letter on the table, he soon found himself on the wayoutside the castle grounds, and along this path he hurried, over themountain passes, toward the city of Aosta. So say the oldestmanuscripts; but in the later stories the details are more fullydescribed. From these it would appear that Bernard leaped from thewindow eighteen or twenty feet, his naked feet striking on a bare rock. On he ran through the night; on over dark and lonely paths in a countrystill uninhabited; over the stony fields and wild watercourses of theGraian Alps, and when the morning dawned he found himself in the cityof Aosta, a hundred miles from Annécy. 

In an old painting the manner of his escape is shown in detail. As hedrops from the window he is supported by Saint Nicholas on the oneside, and an angel on the other, and underneath the painting is thelegend "_Emporté par Miracle_. " It is said, too, that in former timesthe prints of his hands on the stone window-sill, and of his naked feeton the rock below, were both plainly visible. Eight hundred yearslater the good Father Pièrre Verre celebrated mass in the old room inwhich Bernard was confined; and he reports at that time there was bothon the window-sill and on the rock below only the merest trace of theimprints left by Bernard. One could not then "even be sure that theywere made by hand or foot. " But the chronicle wisely says: "Time, ineffacing these marks and rendering them doubtful, has never effaced thetradition of the fact among the people of Annécy. "

In the morning, consternation reigned within the castle. The Lord ofMenthon was filled with disgust, shame, and confusion. The Lord ofMiolans thought that he and his daughter were the victims of a trick, and he would take no explanation or excuse. Only the sword mightefface the stain upon his honor. The marriage feast would have endedin a scene of blood were it not, according to the chronicle, that "God, always admirable in His saints, " sent as an angel of peace the veryperson who had been most cruelly wronged. The Lady of Miolans, "_sponsa pulchra_" beyond a doubt, took up the cause of her delinquentbridegroom, whom God had called, she said, to take some nobler part. When peace had been made, she followed his example, taking the veil ina neighboring convent, where, after many years of virtuous living, shedied, full of days and full of merits. "_Sponsa ipsius_, " so therecord says, "_in qua sancte et religiose dies suos clausit_"; a bridewho in sanctity and religious days closed her life. 

Meanwhile, beyond the Graian Alps and beyond the reach of his father'sinformation, Bernard was safe. In Aosta he was kindly received byPièrre, the Archdeacon. He entered into the service of the church, andthere, in spite of his humility and his self-abasement, he won thefavor of all with whom he had to deal. "God wills, " the chroniclesays, "that His ministers should shine by their sanctity and theirscience. " "Saint Paul commends prudence, gravity, modesty, unselfishness, and hospitality, " and to these precepts Bernard was everfaithful. He lived in the simplest way, like a hermit in his personalrelations, but never out of the life of the world. He was not a maneager to save his own soul only, but the bodies and souls of hisneighbors. He dressed in the plainest garb. He drank from a rudewooden cup. Wine he never touched, and water but rarely. The juice ofbitter herbs was his beverage, and by every means possible he strove toreduce his body to servitude. When he came, years later, to hisdeathbed, it was his sole regret that it was a _bed_ where he was todie, instead of the bare boards on which he was wont to sleep. 

His fame as a preacher spread far and wide. There are many traditionsof his eloquence, and the memory of his words was fondly cherishedwherever his sweet, rich voice was heard. "From the mountains of Savoyto Milan and Turin, and even to the Lake of Geneva, " says thechronicle, "his memory was dear. " So, in due time, after the death ofPièrre, Bernard was made Archdeacon of Aosta. 

In these times the high Alps were filled with Saracen brigands andother heathen freebooters, who celebrated in the mountain fastnessestheir monstrous rites. In the mountains above Aosta the god Pen hadlong been worshiped; the word pen in Celtic meaning the highest. Later, Julius Caesar conquered these wild tribes, and imposed upon themthe religion of the Roman Empire. A statue of Jupiter ("_Jove optimomaximo_") was set up in the mountain in the place of the idol Pen. Afterwards, by way of compromise, the Romans permitted the two tobecome one, and the people worshiped Jovis Pennius (Jupiter Pen), thegreat god of the highest mountains. A statue of Jupiter Pen was set upby the side of the lake in the great pass of the mountain; and fromJupiter Pen these mountains took the name of Pennine Alps, which theybear to this day. The pass itself was called Mons Jovis, the Mountainof Jove, and this, in due time, became shortened to Mont Joux. Throughthis pass of Mont Joux the armies of every nation have marched, theheroes of every age, from Saint Peter, who, the legend says, came overin the year 57, down to Napoléon, who passed nearly eighteen centurieslater, on a much less worthy errand. The Hotel "Déjeuner de Napoléon, "in the little village of "Bourg Saint Pièrre, " recalls in its name thestory of both these visits. 

In the earliest days a refuge hut was built by the side of the statueof Jupiter Pen. In the early pilgrimages to Rome this became a placeof some importance. Later on, marauding armies of Goths, Saracens, andHungarians, successively passing through, destroyed this refuge. Inthe days of Bernard the pass was filled with a horde of brigands, French, Italians, Saracens, and Jews, who had cast aside all religiousfaith of their fathers, and had re-established the worship of the demonin the temple of Jupiter Pen. 

The old manuscripts tell us that in the middle of the tenth century thedemons were in full sway on these mountains; that through the mouth ofthe statue of Jupiter the worst of lies and blasphemies were spoken tothose who came to consult it. These worshipers of strange old godslived by plunder, and exacted toll of all who came through the pass. The same conditions existed on the Graian Alps to the southward. Onone of these mountain passes, some fifty miles from Mont Joux, therelived a rich man named Polycarpe. He, too, did homage to Jupiter, andon the summit of a tall column which he built in the pass he had placeda splendid diamond, which he called the "Eye of Jove. " People camefrom great distances to be healed by its magic glance, and the mountainon which he dwelt was the mountain of the Columna Jovis. This becamechanged, in time, to Colonne Joux, the Mountain of the Column of Jove. And the demons of these two heights, the Mountain of Jove and theColumn of Jove, sent down their baleful call of defiance to the valleyover which Bernard ruled as Archdeacon of Aosta. 

It came to pass that a troop of ten French travelers crossed over thepass of Mont Joux. In the pass they were attacked by marauders, andone of their number was carried away captive. When they came down toAosta, Bernard, the Archdeacon, fearlessly offered to go back with themto attack the giant of the mountain, to rescue their friend, and toreplace the standard of the cross over the altar of the demon. 

That night, so says the old chronicle, Saint Nicholas appeared to himin the garb of a pilgrim and said: "Bernard, let us attack thesemountains. We shall put the demon to flight. We shall overturn thisstatue of Jupiter, which the demons have taken possession of to bringtrouble among Christians. We will destroy it, and we will destroy thecolumn and its diamond, and in their place we will build two refugesfor the use of the pilgrims who cross the two mountains. Go thou, asthe tenth one in this band; then wilt thou conjure the demons. Thoushalt bind the statue with a blessed stole, and its ruins will minglewith the chaos of the mountains. Thus shalt thou destroy the power ofevil to the day of judgment. "

And in proof of the thoroughness with which Bernard performed his work, it is told that a spiritualist who took pleasure in tipping tables camethrough the pass in 1857. The monks were incredulous of his powers, and he wished to convince them by an actual experience. His effortswere all in vain. The tables, the record tells us, were quiet as therocks. The traveler, astonished, said: "This is the first time theyhave failed to obey me. " And thus, says the record, the pledge ofSaint Nicholas was accomplished. The enemy had never more an entranceinto the mountain. 

When Bernard and his followers reached Mont Joux, they found themountain filled with fog and storm, but his heart was undaunted. Passing boldly between the guards of the temple, he flung, so the storysays, his blessed stole over the neck of the statue of Jupiter. Itchanged at once into an iron chain, against which the statue, nowbecome a huge demon-monster, struggled in vain. The good manoverturned it and flung it at his feet. With the same chain he boundthe high priest who guarded the demon. The struggle was short, butdecisive. In a few minutes, so the chronicle says, Bernard hadbanished the demon of Mont Joux and his accomplices to eternal snow andice to the end of time, and had commanded them to cease forever theirevil doings on the mountain. 

An old painting in the Hospice shows this scene in vivid portrait. Bernard stands erect and fearless, his fine face lit up by celestialzeal, his bare head surrounded by a halo, a pilgrim's staff in hisright hand, the stole, now become a chain, in his left, while one footis on the breast of the demon, which gasps helpless at his feet. Thedemon has the body of a man, covered with a wolf's rough, shaggy hair, his fingers and toes ending in sharp claws, a long tail, rough andscaly, like the tail of a rat, coiled snake-like above his legs, thehead and ears of a wolf, the horns of a goat, and on his back anindefinable outgrowth, perhaps the framework of a horrible pair ofwings, its long tongue thrust out from between its bloody teeth. Hewas certainly a gruesome creature. 

[Illustration: Saint Bernard and the demon. ]

And thus it came to pass in the year 970, in the place of the temple ofJupiter Pen, but at the other end of the lake, and in the very summitof the pass, was built the Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard. Fromthat day to this, almost a thousand years, the work of doing good tomen has been humbly and patiently carried on. 

Not long afterward, in a similar way, Bernard attacked the Graian Alps, overthrew the column of Jupiter, crushed its bright diamond to thefinest dust, which he scattered in the winds, and built in its place asecond Hospice, which, with the pass, has borne ever since the name ofthe Little Saint Bernard. 

Silver and gold, the builders of this Hospice had none. Ever since thebeginning, they have exercised their charities at the expense of thosewho cared for the Lord's work. All who pass by are treated alike. Those who are received into the Hospice can leave much orlittle--something or nothing, whatever they please, --to carry the samesame help to others. 

In the book of the good Saint Francis de Sales long ago, so thechronicle says, these words were written:

"There are many degrees in charity. To lend to the poor, this is thefirst degree. To give to the poor is a higher degree. Still higher togive oneself; to devote one's life to the service of the poor. Hospitality, when necessity is not extreme, is a counsel, and toreceive the stranger is its first degree. But to go out on the roadsto find and help, as Abraham did, this is a grade still higher. Stillhigher is to live in dangerous places, to serve, aid, and save thepassers-by; to attend, lodge, succor, and save from danger thetravelers, who else would die in cold and storm. This is the work ofthe noble friend of God, who founded the hospitals on the twomountains, now for this called by his name, Great Saint Bernard, in thediocese of Sion, and the Little Saint Bernard, in the Tarentaise. "

And so the Hospice was built, and in the enthusiastic words of achronicle of the times, "Tears and sorrow were banished, peace and joyhave replaced them; abundance has made there her abode; the terrorshave disappeared, and there reigns eternal springtime. Instead ofhell, you will find there paradise. " Not quite paradise, perhaps, sofar as the elements are concerned, but a dozen kindly men, a legion ofdogs, big, cheerful, and noisy, a warm fire, a simple meal, and aGod-speed to all men, whatever their race, or creed, or temper. 

I need add but a word more of the history of Bernard himself. One dayan old man and his wife came up to visit the Hospice and to pay theirrespects to the monk who had founded it. Bernard met them there, andat once recognized his father and mother. He received themsympathetically, and they told him the story of their lost son. Bernard spoke to them tenderly of the work to which God must havecalled him. He told them they should rejoice that their child had beenfound worthy of his purposes, and after a time they seemed to becomereconciled, and felt that He doeth all things well. Then Bernard toldthem who he was, and when after many days they went away from theHospice, they left the money to build in each of them a chapel. 

Bernard died in the year 1007, at the age of eighty-three. His lastwords were these: "O Lord, I give my soul into thy hands. " The words, "The saint is dead, " passed on from mouth to mouth throughout theseAlpine regions. The peasants had canonized him already a hundred yearsbefore the sanctity of his work was officially recognized at Rome. 

The story of his burial is again marked by miracles. Rich men viedwith each other in making funeral offerings. One gave him amagnificent stone coffin, but this man had been a usurer. Usury was asin abhorred by Saint Bernard, and the people found that no force orpersuasion could place his body within this coffin. So another tomb, less pretentious, but more worthy, was found. At the end Bernard'sremains were divided among the churches, each of whom claimed him asits own. To the Hospice fell his ring and his cup, a tooth, and a fewfinger-bones, and, most important of all, his name--the "Great SaintBernard. "

The chronicles give a long list of miracles which since then have beenwrought in his name. These are for the most part wonderful healings, the stilling of storms, the bringing of rain, the driving away ofgrasshoppers. However, men are prone always to look for the miracle inthe things that are of least moment. The life and work of the man wasthe real miracle, not the flight of grasshoppers. The miracle of alltime is the power of humanity when it works in harmony with the lawsand purposes of God. Consecrated to God's work, and by the work's ownseverity protected through the centuries from corruption andtemptation, the work of the monk of Aosta has outlasted palaces andthrones. Through the influence of charity, and piety, and truth, thedemon has been driven from these mountains. When the love of man joinsto the love of God, all spirits of evil vanish as mist before themorning sun. 

[1] St. Bernard de Menthon must not be confounded with Bernard deClairvaux, born in 1091, the preacher of the Crusades. 

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS. [1]

I have a word to say of Thoreau, and of an episode which brought hischaracter into bold relief, and which has fairly earned for him a placein American history, as well as in our literature. 

I do not wish now to give any account of the life of Thoreau. In thepreface to his volume called "Excursions" you will find a biographicalsketch, written by the loving hand of Mr. Emerson, his neighbor andfriend. Neither shall I enter into any justification of Thoreau'speculiar mode of life, nor shall I describe the famous cabin in thepine woods by Walden Pond, already becoming the Mecca of the Order ofSaunterers, whose great prophet was Thoreau. His profession ofland-surveyor was one naturally adopted by him; for to him every hilland forest was a being, each with its own individuality. Thisprofession kept him in the fields and woods, with the sky over his headand the mold under his feet. It paid him the money needed for hisdaily wants, and he cared for no more. 

He seldom went far away from Concord, and, in a half-playful way, heused to view everything in the world from a Concord standpoint. Allthe grandest trees grew there and all the rarest flowers, and nearlyall the phenomena of nature could be observed at Concord. 

"Nothing can be hoped of you, " he said, "if this bit of mold under yourfeet is not sweeter to you than any other in this world--in any world. "

Although one of the most acute of observers, Thoreau was never reckonedamong the scientific men of his time. He was never a member of anyNatural History Society, nor of any Academy of Sciences, bodies which, in a general way, he held in not altogether unmerited contempt. Whenmen band together for the study of nature, they first draft a longconstitution, with its attendant by-laws, and then proceed to theelection of officers, and, by and by, the study of nature becomessubordinate to the maintenance of the organization. 

In technical scientific work, Thoreau took little pleasure. It isoften pedantic, often bloodless, and often it is a source ofinspiration only to him by whom the work is done. Animals and plantswere interesting to him, not in their structure and genealogicalaffinities, but in their relations to his mind. He loved wild things, not alone for themselves, but for the tonic effect of their savageryupon him. 

"I wish to speak a word for nature, " he said, "for absolute freedom andwildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, toregard man as an inhabitant, a part and parcel of nature, rather thanas a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement; if so, Imay make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions ofcivilization. The minister and the school committees, and every one ofyou, will take care of that. "

To Thoreau's admirers, he is the prophet of the fields and woods, theinterpreter of nature, and his every word has to them the deepestsignificance. He is the man who

 "Lives all alone, close to the bone, And where life is sweetest, constantly eatest. "

They resent all criticism of his life or his words. They are impatientof all analysis of his methods or of his motives, and a word of praiseof him is the surest passport to their good graces. 

But the critics sometimes miss the inner harmony which Thoreau'sadmirers see, and discern only queer paradoxes and extravagances ofstatement where the others hear the voice of nature's oracle. Withmost literary men, the power or disposition of those who know orunderstand their writings is in some degree a matter of literaryculture. It is hardly so in the case of Thoreau. 

The most illiterate man I know who had ever heard of Thoreau, Mr. Barney Mullins, of Freedom Centre, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, was amost ardent admirer of Thoreau, while the most eminent critic inAmerica, James Russell Lowell, does him scant justice. To Lowell, thefinest thoughts of Thoreau are but strawberries from Emerson's garden, and other critics have followed back these same strawberries throughEmerson's to still older gardens, among them to that of Sir ThomasBrowne. 

But, setting the critics aside, let me tell you about Barney Mullins. Twenty years ago, I lived for a year in the northern part of Wisconsin. The snow is very deep in the winter there, and once I rode into townthrough the snowbanks on a sled drawn by two oxen and driven by BarneyMullins. Barney was born on the banks of Killarney, and he couldscarcely be said to speak the English language. He told me that beforehe came to Freedom Centre he had lived in a town called Concord, inMassachusetts. I asked him if he had happened to know a man there bythe name of Henry Thoreau. He at once grew enthusiastic and he said, among other things: "Mr. Thoreau was a land-surveyor in Concord. Iknew him well. He had a way of his own, and he didn't care naughtabout money, but if there was ever a gentleman alive, he was one. "

Barney seemed much saddened when I told him that Mr. Thoreau had beendead a dozen years. On parting, he asked me to come out some time toFreedom Centre, and to spend a night with him. He had n't much of aroom to offer me, but there was always a place in his house for afriend of Mr. Thoreau. Such is the feeling of this guild of lovers ofThoreau, and some of you may come to belong to it. 

Here is a test for you. Thoreau says: "I long ago lost a hound, a bayhorse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are thetravelers I have spoken to regarding them, describing their tracks, andwhat calls they answered to. I have met one or two who have heard thehound and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappearbehind the cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if theyhad lost them themselves. "

Now, if any of you, in your dreams, have heard the horse, or seen thesunshine on the dove's wings, you may join in the search. If not, youmay close the book, for Thoreau has not written for you. 

This Thoreau guild is composed, as he himself says, "of knights of anew, or, rather, an old order, not equestrians or chevaliers, notRitters, or riders, but walkers, a still more ancient and honorableclass, I trust. "

"I have met, " he says, "but one or two persons who understand the artof walking; who had a genius for sauntering, which word is beautifullyderived from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Agesand asked charity, under pretense of going '_à la Sainte Terre_'--aSainte-terrer, a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land intheir walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; butthey who go there are saunterers, in the good sense. Every walk is akind of crusade preached by some Peter the Hermit within us, to goforth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. 

"It is true that we are but faint-hearted crusaders, who undertake nopersevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearthside from which we setout. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth onthe shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, neverto return, prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics toour desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child, and friends; if you havepaid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, andare a free man, you are ready for a walk. "

Though a severe critic of conventional follies, Thoreau was always ahopeful man; and no finer rebuke to the philosophy of Pessimism wasever given than in these words of his: "I know of no more encouragingfact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by aconscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particularpicture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; butit is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere andmedium through which we look. This, morally, we can do. "

But it is not of Thoreau as a saunterer, or as a naturalist, or as anessayist, that I wish to speak, but as a moralist, and this in relationto American politics. Thoreau lived in a dark day of our politicalhistory. At one time he made a declaration of independence in a smallway, and refused allegiance and poll-tax to a Government built on acorner-stone of human slavery. Because of this he was put into jail, where he remained one night, and where he made some curiousobservations on his townspeople as viewed from the inside of the bars. Emerson came along in the morning, and asked him what he was there for. "Why are you not in here, Mr. Emerson?" was his reply; for it seemed tohim that no man had the right to be free in a country where some menwere slaves. 

"Voting for the right, " Thoreau said, "is doing nothing for it; it isonly expressing feebly your desire that right should prevail. " Hewould not for an instant recognize that political organization as hisgovernment which was the slave's government also. "In fact, " he said, "I will quietly, after my fashion, declare war with the State. Under agovernment which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just manis also a prison. I know this well, that if one thousand, if onehundred, or if one honest man in this State of Massachusetts, ceasingto remain in this co-partnership, should be locked up in the countyjail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. Itmatters not how small the beginning may seem to be, what is once welldone is done forever. "

Thoreau's friends paid his taxes for him, and he was set free, so thatthe whole affair seemed like a joke. Yet, as Stevenson says, "If hisexample had been followed by a hundred, or by thirty of his followers, it would have greatly precipitated the era of freedom and justice. Wefeel the misdeeds of our country with so little fervor, for we are notwitnesses to the suffering they cause. But when we see them awake anactive horror in our fellow-man; when we see a neighbor prefer to liein prison than be so much as passively implicated in theirperpetration, even the dullest of us will begin to realize them with aquicker pulse. "

In the feeling that a wrong, no matter how great, must fall before thedetermined assault of a man, no matter how weak, Thoreau found thereason for his action. The operation of the laws of God is like anincontrollable torrent. Nothing can stand before them; but the work ofa single man may set the torrent in motion which will sweep away theaccumulations of centuries of wrong. 

There is a long chapter in our national history which is not a gloriousrecord. Most of us are too young to remember much of politics underthe Fugitive Slave Law, or to understand the deference whichpoliticians of every grade then paid to the peculiar institution. Itwas in those days in the Middle West that Kentucky blackguards, backedby the laws of the United States, and aided not by Northern blackguardsalone, but by many of the best citizens of those States, chased runawayslaves through the streets of our Northern capitals. 

And not the politicians alone, but the teachers and preachers, tooktheir turn in paying tribute to Caesar. We were told that the Bibleitself was a champion of slavery. Two of our greatest theologians inthe North declared, in the name of the Higher Law, that slavery was aholy thing, which the Lord, who cursed Canaan, would ever uphold. 

In those days there came a man from the West--a tall, gaunt, grizzly, shaggy-haired, God-fearing man, a son of the Puritans, whose ancestorscame over on the Mayflower. A dangerous fanatic or lunatic, he wascalled, and, with the aid of a few poor negroes whom he had stolen fromslavery, he defied the power of this whole slave-catching UnitedStates. A little square brick building, once a sort of car-shop, stands near the railway station in the town of Harper's Ferry, with themountain wall not far behind it, and the Potomac River running below. And from this building was fired the shot which pierced the heart ofslavery. And the Governor of Virginia captured this man, and took himout and hung him, and laid his body in the grave, where it still liesmoldering. But there was part of him not in the jurisdiction ofVirginia, a part which they could neither hang nor bury; and, to theinfinite surprise of the Governor of Virginia, his soul went marchingon. 

[Illustration: John Brown. ]

When they heard in Concord that John Brown had been captured, and wassoon to be hung, Thoreau sent notice through the city that he wouldspeak in the public hall on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all to be present. 

The Republican Committee and the Committee of the Abolitionists sentword to him that this was no time to speak; to discuss such mattersthen was premature and inadvisable. He replied: "I did not send to youfor advice, but to tell you that I am going to speak. " The selectmenof Concord dared neither grant nor refuse him the hall. At last theyventured to lose the key in a place where they thought he could find it. 

This address of Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown, " should be aclassic in American history. We do not always realize that the time ofAmerican history is now. The dates of the settlement of Jamestown, andPlymouth, and St. Augustine do not constitute our history. Columbusdid not discover us. In a high sense, the true America is barelythirty years old, and its first President was Abraham Lincoln. 

We in the North are a little impatient at times, and our politicians, who are not always our best citizens, mutter terrible oaths, especiallyin the month of October, because the South is not yet whollyregenerate, because not all which sprang from the ashes of theslave-pen were angels of light. 

But let us be patient while the world moves on. Forty years ago notonly the banks of the Yazoo and the Chattahoochee, but those of theHudson, and the Charles, and the Wabash, were under the lash. On theeve of John Brown's hanging not half a dozen men in the city ofConcord, the most intellectual town in New England, the home ofEmerson, and Hawthorne, and Alcott, dared say that they felt anyrespect for the man or sympathy for the cause for which he died. 

I wish to quote a few passages from this "Plea for Captain John Brown. "To fully realize its power, you should read it all for yourselves. Youmust put yourselves back into history, now already seeming almostancient history to us, to the period when Buchanan was President--theterrible sultry lull just before the great storm. You must picture theaudience of the best people in Massachusetts, half-sympathizing withCaptain Brown, half-afraid of being guilty of treason in so doing. Youmust picture the speaker, with his clear-cut, earnest features andpenetrating voice. No preacher, no politician, no professionalreformer, no Republican, no Democrat; a man who never voted; anaturalist whose companions were the flowers and the birds, the treesand the squirrels. It was the voice of Nature in protest againstslavery and in plea for Captain Brown. 

"My respect for my fellow-men, " said Thoreau, "is not being increasedthese days. I have noticed the cold-blooded way in which men speak ofthis event, as if an ordinary malefactor, though one of unusual pluck, 'the gamest man I ever saw, ' the Governor of Virginia said, had beencaught and was about to be hung. He was not thinking of his foes whenthe Governor of Virginia thought he looked so brave. 

"It turns what sweetness I have to gall to hear the remarks of some ofmy neighbors. When we heard at first that he was dead, one of mytownsmen observed that 'he dieth as the fool dieth, ' which, for aninstant, suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said, disparagingly, that he threw his lifeaway because he resisted the Government. Which way have they throwntheir lives, pray?

"I hear another ask, Yankee-like, 'What will he gain by it?' as if heexpected to fill his pockets by the enterprise. If it does not lead toa surprise party, if he does not get a new pair of boots or a vote ofthanks, it must be a failure. But he won't get anything. Well, no; Idon't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, takethe year around, but he stands a chance to save his soul--and such asoul!--which you do not. You can get more in your market for a quartof milk than a quart of blood, but yours is not the market heroes carrytheir blood to. 

"Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that in themoral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable; thatwhen you plant or bury a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure tospring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, it does not askour leave to germinate. 

"A man does a brave and humane deed, and on all sides we hear peopleand parties declaring, ' I didn't do it, nor countenance him to do it inany conceivable way. It can't fairly be inferred from my past career. 'Ye need n't take so much pains, my friends, to wash your skirts of him. No one will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours. Hewent and came, as he himself informs us, under the auspices of JohnBrown, and nobody else. '

"'All is quiet in Harper's Ferry, ' say the journals. What is thecharacter of that calm which follows when the law and the slaveholderprevail? I regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring outwith glaring distinctness the character of this Government. We neededto be thus assisted to see it by the light of history. It needed tosee itself. When a government puts forth its strength on the side ofinjustice, as ours, to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of theslave, it reveals itself simply as brute force. It is more manifestthan ever that tyranny rules. I see this Government to be effectuallyallied with France and Austria in oppressing mankind. 

"The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few areat the head of it, or how small its army, --is the power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishesinjustice. What shall we think of a government to which all the trulybrave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it andthose whom it oppresses?

"Treason! Where does such treason take its rise? I cannot helpthinking of you as ye deserve, ye governments! Can you dry up thefountain of thought? High treason, when it is resistance to tyrannyhere below, has its origin in the power that makes and foreverre-creates man. When you have caught and hung all its human rebels, you have accomplished nothing but your own guilt. You have not struckat the fountain-head. The same indignation which cleared the templeonce will clear it again. 

"I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were thegood and the brave ever in the majority? Would you have had him waittill that time came? Till you and I came over to him? The very factthat he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him, would alonedistinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small, indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who therelaid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, calledout of many thousands, if not millions. A man of principle, of rarecourage and devoted humanity, ready to sacrifice his life at any momentfor the benefit of his fellow-man; it may be doubted if there were asmany more their equals in the country; for their leader, no doubt, hadscoured the land far and wide, seeking to swell his troop. These alonewere ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. Surelythey were the very best men you could select to be hung! That was thegreatest compliment their country could pay them. They were ripe forher gallows. She has tried a long time; she has hung a good many, butnever found the right one before. 

"When I think of him and his six sons and his son-in-law enlisted forthis fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, formonths, if not years, summering and wintering the thought, withoutexpecting any reward but a good conscience, while almost all Americastood ranked on the other side, I say again that it affects me as asublime spectacle. 

"If he had had any journal advocating his cause, any organ monotonouslyand wearisomely playing the same old tune and then passing around thehat, it would have been fatal to his efficiency. If he had acted insuch a way as to be let alone by the Government, he might have beensuspected. It was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him, orhe to the tyrant, that distinguished him from all the reformers of theday that I know. 

"This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death, thepossibility of a man's dying. It seems as if no man had ever died inAmerica before. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on words and acts that do. 

"It is the best news that America has ever heard. It has alreadyquickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more generousblood in her veins than any number of years of what is called politicaland commercial prosperity. How many a man who was lately contemplatingsuicide has now something to live for!

"I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, butfor his character, his immortal life, and so it becomes your causewholly, and it is not his in the least. 

"Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of the chainwhich is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he isan angel of light. I see now that it was necessary that the bravestand humanest man in all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw ithimself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as hisdeath. 

"'Misguided! Garrulous! Insane! Vindictive!' So you write in youreasy chairs, and thus he, wounded, responds from the floor of theArmory--clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of Nature is! 'Noman sent me here. It was my own promptings and that of my Maker. Iacknowledge no master in human form. '

"And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing hiscaptors, who stand over him. 

"'I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God andhumanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere withyou so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I have yet to learn that God is any respecter of persons. 

"'I pity the poor in bondage, who have none to help them; that is why Iam here, not to gratify personal animosity, revenge, or vindictivespirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged that areas good as you are, and as precious in the sight of God. 

"'I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all of you people atthe South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, thatmust come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. Thesooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me now veryeasily--I am nearly disposed of already, --but this question is still tobe settled, this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet. '"

"I foresee the time, " said Thoreau, "when the painter will paint thatscene, no longer going to Rome for his subject. The poet will sing it;the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and theDeclaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some futurenational gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be nomore here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge. "

A few years ago, while on a tramp through the North Woods, I came outthrough the forests of North Elba, to the old "John Brown Farm. " HereJohn Brown lived for many years, and here he tried to establish acolony of freed slaves in the pure air of the mountains. Here, too, his family remained through the stirring times when he took part in thebloody struggles that made and kept Kansas free. 

The little old brown farmhouse stands on the edge of the great woods, afew miles to the north of the highest peaks of the Adirondacks. Thereis nothing unusual about the house. You will find a dozen such in afew hours' walk almost anywhere in the mountain parts of New England orNew York. It stands on a little hill, "in a sightly place, " as theysay in that region, with no shelter of trees around it. 

[Illustration: The John Brown Homestead, North Elba, N. Y. ]

At the foot of the hill in a broad curve flows the River Au Sable, small and clear and cold, and full of trout. It is not far above thatthe stream takes its rise in the dark Indian Pass, the only place inthese mountains where the ice of winter lasts all summer long. Thesame ice on the one side sends forth the Au Sable, and on the otherfeeds the fountain head of the infant Hudson River. 

In the little dooryard in front of the farmhouse is the historic spotwhere John Brown's body still lies moldering. There is not even agrave of his own. His bones lie with those of his father, and theshort record of his life and death is crowded on the foot of hisfather's tombstone. Near by, in the little yard, lies a huge, wandering boulder, torn off years ago by the glaciers from the granitehills that hem in Indian Pass. The boulder is ten feet or more indiameter, large enough to make the farmhouse behind it seem small incomparison. On its upper surface, in letters two feet long, which canbe read plainly for a mile away, is cut the simple name--

 JOHN BROWN. 

This is John Brown's grave, and the place, the boulder; and theinscription are alike fitting to the man he was. 

[Illustration: John Brown's Grave. ]

Dust to dust; ashes to ashes; granite to granite; the last of thePuritans!

[1] Address before the California State Normal School, at San José, 1892. 

A KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF POETS. [1]

"In London I saw two pictures. One was of a woman. You would notmistake it for any of the Greek goddesses. It had a splendor andmajesty such as Phidias might have given to a woman Jupiter. But notterrible. The culmination of the awful beauty was in an expression ofmatchless compassion. If there had been other figures, they must havebeen suffering humanity at her feet. 

"The other was also of a woman. Whose face it is hard to say. Not theFuries, not Lady Macbeth, not Catherine de Medici, not Phillip theSecond, not Nero, not any face you have ever seen, but a gathering upfrom all the faces you have seen--the greatness, the splendor, thesavagery, the greed, the pride, the hate, the mercilessness, into onecolossal, terrifyingly Satanic woman-face. The first was clothed in asimple, soft, white robe; the other in a befitting tragic splendor, mostly blood-red. I looked from one to the other. What immeasurabledistance between them! What single point have they in common? But asI look back and forth I seem to see a certain formal similarity. Itgrows upon me. I am incredulous. I am appalled. Then one touches meand whispers: 'They are the same. It is the Church. ' In London I sawthis--in the air. "--WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN. 

Four centuries ago began the great struggle for freedom of thoughtwhich has made our modern civilization possible. I wish here to givesomething of the story of a man who in his day was not the least inthis conflict--a man who dared to think and act for himself whenthought and act were costly--Ulrich von Hutten. 

Near Frankfort-on-the-Main, on a sharp pinnacle of rock above thelittle railway station of Vollmerz, may still be found the scanty ruinsof an old castle which played a brave part in German history before itwas destroyed in the Thirty Years War. 

In this castle of Steckelberg, in the year 1488, was born Ulrich vonHutten. He was the last of a long line of Huttens of Steckelberg, strong men who knew not fear, who had fought for the Emperor in alllands whither the imperial eagle had flown, and who, when the empirewas at peace, had fought right merrily with their neighbors on allsides. Robber-knights they were, no doubt, some or all of them; but inthose days all was fair in love and in war. And this line of warriorscentered in Ulrich von Hutten, and with him it ended. "The wildkindred has gone out with this its greatest. "

Ulrich was the eldest son, and bore his father's name. But he was notthe son his father had dreamed of. Slender of figure, short ofstature, and weak of limb, Ulrich seemed unworthy of his burlyancestry. The horse, the sword, and the lute were not for him. Hetried hard to master them and to succeed in all things worthy of aknight. But he was strong only with his books. At last to his bookshis father consigned him, and, sorely disappointed, he sent Ulrich tothe monastery of Fulda to be made a priest. 

A wise man, Eitelwolf von Stein, became his friend, and pointed out tohim a life braver than that of a priest, more noble than that of aknight, the life of a scholar. To Hutten's father Eitelwolf wrote:"Would you bury a genius like that in the cloister? He must be a manof letters. " But the father had decided once for all. Ulrich mustnever return to Steckelberg unless he came back as a priest. And theson took his fate in his own hands, and fled from Fulda, to make hisway as a scholar in a world in which scholarship received scantyrecognition. 

At the same time another young man whose history was to be interwovenwith his own, Martin Luther, fled from the wickedness and deceit ofthis same world to the solitude of the monastery of Erfurth. By verydifferent paths they came at last to work in the same cause, and theirmodes of action were not less different. 

To the University of Cologne Hutten went, and with the students of thatday he was trained in the mysteries of scholasticism, and in the Latinof the schoolmen and the priests. Wonderful problems they ponderedover, and they used to write long arguments in Latin for or againstpropositions which came nowhere within the domain of fact. Thatscholarship stood related to reality, and that it must find its end andjustification in action was no part of the philosophy of those times. 

But Hutten and his friends cared little for scholastic puzzles and theygave themselves to the study of the beauties of Latin poetry and to thenewly opened mine of the literature of Greece. They delighted inVirgil and Lucian, and still more in Homer and Aeschylus. 

The Turks had conquered Constantinople, and the fall of the GreekEmpire had driven many learned Greeks to the West of Europe. Theresome of the scholars received them with open arms, and eagerly learnedfrom them to read Homer and Aristotle in the original tongue, and theNew Testament also. Those who followed these studies came to be knownas Humanists. But most of the universities and the monasteries inGermany looked upon this revival of Greek culture as pernicious andantichristian. Poetry they despised. The Latin Vulgate met theirreligious needs, and Greek was only another name for Paganism. Theparty name of Obscurantists ("Dunkelmänner") was given to these, andthis name has remained with them on the records of history. 

In the letters of one of Hutten's comrades we find this confession offaith, which is interesting as expressing the feelings of young men ofthat time: "There is but one God, but he has many forms, and manynames--Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpine, Tellus, Mary. But be careful how you say that. One must disclosethese things in secret, like Eleusinian mysteries. In matters ofreligion, you must use the cover of fables and riddles. You, withJupiter's grace (that is, the grace of the best and greatest god), candespise the lesser gods in silence. When I say Jupiter, I mean Christand the true God. The coat and the beard and the bones of Christ Iworship not. I worship the living God, who wears no coat nor beard, and left no bones upon the earth. "

Hutten wished to know the world, not from books only, but to see allcities and lands; to measure himself with other men; to rise abovethose less worthy. The danger of such a course seemed to him only thegreater attraction. Content to him was laziness; love of home but adog's delight in a warm fire. "I live, " he said, "in no place ratherthan another; my home is everywhere. "

So he tramped through Germany to the northward, and had but a sorrytime. In his own mind he was a scholar, a poet, a knight of thenoblest blood of Germany; to others he was a little sickly and forlornvagrant. Never strong of body, he was stricken by a miserable diseasewhich filled his life with a succession of attacks of fever. He wasship-wrecked on the Baltic Sea, sick and forlorn in Pomerania, and atlast he was received in charity in the house of Henning Lötz, professorof law at Greifeswald. 

This action has given Lötz's name immortality, for it is associatedwith the first of those fiery poems of Hutten which, in their way, areunique in literature. For Hutten was restless and proud, and was notto be content with bread and butter and a new suit of clothes. Thisindependence was displeasing to the professor, who finally, in utterdisgust, turned Hutten out of doors in midwinter. When the boy hadtramped a while in storm and slush, two servants of Lötz overtook himon the road and robbed him of his money and clothing. In a wretchedplight he reached a little inn in Rostock, in Mecklenberg. Here theprofessors in the university received him kindly, and made provisionfor his needs. Then he let loose the fury of his youthful anger onLötz. As ever, his poetic genius rose with his wrath, and the moreangry he became the greater was he as a poet. 

Two volumes he published, ringing the changes of his contempt andhatred of Lötz, at the same time praising the virtues of those who hadfound in him a kindred spirit. A "knight of the order of poets, " hestyles himself, and to all Humanists, to the "fellow-feeling among freespirits" ("_Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern_") he appeals forsympathy in his struggle with Lötz. 

He had, indeed, not found a foeman worthy of his steel, but he hadshown what a finely tempered blade he bore. Foemen enough he found inlater times, and his steel had need of all its sharpness and temper. And it never failed him to the last. 

Meanwhile he wandered to Vienna, giving lectures there on the art ofpoetry. But poetry was abhorred by the schoolmen everywhere, and thestudents of the university were forbidden to attend his lectures. Hethen went to Italy. When he reached Pavia, he found the city in themidst of a siege, surrounded by a hostile French army. He fell ill ofa fever, and giving himself up for dead, he composed the famous epitaphfor himself, of which I give a rough translation:

 Here, also be it said, a life of ill-fortune is ended; By evil pursued on the water; beset by wrong upon land. Here lie Hutten's bones; he, who had done nothing wrongful, Was wickedly robbed of his life by the sword in a Frenchman's hand. By Fate, decided that he should see unlucky days only; Decided that even these days could never be many or long; Hemmed in by danger and death, he forsook not serving the muses, And as well as he could, he rendered this service in song. 

The Frenchman's sword did not rob him of his life. The Frenchman'shand took only his money, which was not much, and again sent himadrift. He now set his pen to writing epigrams on the Emperor, whereinMaximilian was compared to the eagle which should devour the frogs inthe swamps of Venice. Meanwhile he enlisted as a common soldier inMaximilian's army. 

In Italy, the abuses of the Papacy attracted his attention. Officialsof the Church were then engaged in extending the demand forindulgences. The sale of pardons "straight from Rome, all hot, " wasbecoming a scandal in Christendom. All this roused the wrath ofHutten, who attacked the Pope himself in his songs:

 "Heaven now stands for a price to be peddled and sold, But what new folly is this, as though the fiat of Heaven Needed an earthly witness, an earthly warrant and seal!"

More prosperous times followed, and we find Hutten honored as a poet, living in the court of the Archbishop of Mainz. At this time a cousin, Hans Hutten, a young man of great courage and promise, was a knight inthe service of Ulrich, Duke of Wurtemberg. He was a favorite of theDuke, and he and his young wife were the life of the Würtemburg court. And Duke Ulrich once came to Hans and threw himself at his feet, begging that this wife, whom he loved, should be given over wholly tohim. Hans Hutten answered the Duke like a man, and the Duke arose withmurder in his heart. Afterward, when they were hunting in a wood, hestabbed Hans Hutten in the back with his sword. 

All this came to the ear of Ulrich Hutten in Mainz. Love for hiscousin, love for his name and family, love for freedom and truth, allurged him to avenge the murdered Hans. The wrongs the boy had sufferedfrom the coarse-hearted Professor Lötz became as nothing beside thisgreat crime against the Huttens and against manhood. 

In all the history of invective, I know of nothing so fierce asHutten's appeal against Duke Ulrich In five different pamphlets hiscrime was described to the German people, and all good men, from theEmperor down, were called on to help him in his struggle against theDuke of Würtemberg. 

"I envy you your fame, you murderer, " he wrote. "A year will be namedfor you, and there shall be a day set off for you. Future generationsshall read, for those who are born this year, that they were born inthe year stained by the ineffaceable shame of Germany. You will comeinto the calendar, scoundrel. You will enrich history. Your deed isimmortal, and you will be remembered in all future time. You have hadyour ambition, and you shall never be forgotten. "

This struggle lasted long. Finally, after many appeals, the Germannobles rose in arms and besieged Stuttgart, and Duke Ulrich was drivenfrom the land he had disgraced. 

[Illustration: Ulrich von Hutten. ]

Again Hutten visited Italy, this time by a partial reconciliation withhis father, who would overlook his failure to become a priest if hewould study law at Rome. At about this time Luther visited Rome. Hecame, at first, in a spirit of reverence; but, at last, he wrote:"_Wenn es gibt eine Hölle, Roma ist darauf gebant_. " ("If there is ahell, Rome is built on it. ")

The impression on Hutten was scarcely less vivid. Little by little hebegan to see in the Pope of Rome a criminal greater that ProfessorLötz, greater than Duke Ulrich, one who could devour not one cousinonly, but the whole German people and nation. "For three hundredyears, " said he, "the Pope and the schoolmen have been covering theteachings of Christ with a mass of superstitious ceremonies and wickedbooks. " These feelings were poured out in an appeal to the Germanrulers to shake off the yoke, and no longer send their money to "Simonof Rome. "

Hutten's friends tried to quiet him. He was a man not of free thoughtonly, but of free speech, and knew no concealment. Milder men in thosetimes, as later Melancthon and Erasmus, were full of admiration ofHutten, and valued his skill and force. But they were afraid of him, and fearful always that the best of causes should be wrecked in hishands. 

At this time, at the age of twenty-five, Hutten is described as asmall, thin man, of homely features, with blonde hair and black beard. His pale face wore a severe, almost wild, expression. His speech wassharp, often terrible. Yet with those whom he loved and respected hisvoice had a frank and winning charm. He had but few friends, but theywere fast ones. His personal character, so far as records go, wassingularly pure, and not often in his writings does he strike a coarseor unclean note. 

In these days, the two most learned men in Germany were Erasmus andReuchlin. They were leaders of the Humanists, skilled in Greek, andeven in the Hebrew tongue, and were called by Hutten "the two eyes ofGermany. " A Jew named Pfefferkorn, who had become converted toChristianity, was filled with an unholy zeal against his fellow-Jewswho had not been converted. Among other things, he asked an edict fromthe Emperor that all Jewish books in Germany should be destroyed. Reuchlin was a Hebrew scholar. He had written a Hebrew grammar, andwas learned in the Old Testament, as well as in the Talmud, and otherdeposits of the ancient lore of the rabbis. The Emperor referredPfefferkorn's request to Reuchlin for his opinion. Reuchlin decidedthat there was no valid reason for the destruction of any of theancient Jewish writings, and only of such modern ones as might bedecided by competent scholars to be hostile to Christianity. 

This enraged Pfefferkorn and his Obscurantist associates. Pamphletswere written denouncing Reuchlin, and these were duly answered. Ageneral war of words between the Humanists and Obscurantists began, which, in time, came before the Pope and the Emperor. Reuchlin wasregarded in those days as a man of unusual calmness and dignity. Nextto Erasmus, he was the most learned scholar in Europe. He would nevercondescend in his controversies to the coarse terms used by hisadversaries. We may learn something of the temper of the times byobserving that, in a single pamphlet, as quoted by Strauss, theepithets that the dignified Reuchlin applies to Pfefferkorn are: "Apoisonous beast, " "a scarecrow, " "a horror, " "a mad dog, " "a horse, " "amule, " "a hog, " "a fox, " "a raging wolf, " "a Syrian lion, " "aCerberus, " "a fury of hell. " In this matter Reuchlin was finallytriumphant. This triumph was loudly celebrated by his friend Hutten inanother poem, in which the Obscurantists were mercilessly attacked. 

We have seen with Hutten's growth a gradual increase in the importanceof those to whom he declared himself an enemy. He began as a boy withthe obscure Professor Lötz. He ended with the Pope of Rome. 

At this time Reuchlin published a volume called "_Epistolae ClarorumVirorum_" ("letters of illustrious men"). It was made up of letterswritten by the various learned men of Europe to Reuchlin, in sympathywith him in his struggle. The title of this work gave the keynote to aseries of letters called "_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_" ("letters ofobscure men")--that is, of Obscurantists. 

These letters, written by different persons, but largely by Hutten, arethe most remarkable of all satires of that time. 

They are a series of imaginary epistles, supposed to be addressed byvarious Obscurantists to a poet named Ortuinus. They are written withconsummate skill, in the degenerate Latin used by the priests in thosedays, and they are made to exhibit all the secret meanness, ignorance, and perversity of their supposed writers. 

The first of these epistles of the "obscure men" were eagerly read: bytheir supposed associates, the Obscurantists. Here were men who feltas they felt, and who were not afraid to speak. The mendicant friarsin England had a day of rejoicing, and a Dominican friar in Flandersbought all the copies of the letters he could find to present to hisbishop. 

But in time even the dullest began to feel the severity of the satire. The last of these letters formed the most telling blows ever dealt atthe schoolmen by the men of learning. In one of the earlier letters wefind this question, which may serve as a type of many others:

A man ate an egg in which a chicken was just beginning to form, ignorant of that fact, and forgetting that it was Friday. A friendconsoles him by saying that a chicken in that stage counts for no morethan worms in cheese or in cherries, and these can be eaten even infasting-time. But the writer is not satisfied. Worms, he had beentold by a physician, who was also a great naturalist, are reckoned asfishes, which one can eat on fast-days. But with all this, he fearsthat a young chicken may be really forbidden food, and he asks the helpof the poet Ortuinus to a righteous decision. 

Another person writes to Ortuinus: "There is a new book much talked ofhere, and, as you are a poet, you can do us a good service by tellingus of it. A notary told me that this book is the wellspring of poetry, and that its author, one Homer, is the father of all poets. And hesaid there is another Homer in Greek. I said, 'What is the use of theGreek? the Latin is much better. ' And I asked, 'What is contained inthe book?' And he said it treats of certain people who are calledGreeks, who carried on a war with some others called Trojans. Andthese Trojans had a great city, and those Greeks besieged it and stayedthere ten years. And the Trojans came out and fought them till thewhole plain was covered with blood and quite red. And they heard thenoise in heaven, and one of them threw a stone which twelve men couldnot lift, and a horse began to talk and utter prophecies. But I can'tbelieve that, because it seems impossible, and the book seems to me notto be authentic. I pray you give me your opinion. "

Another relates the story of his visit to Reuchlin:

"When I came into his house, Reuchlin said, 'Welcome, bachelor; seatyourself. ' And he had a pair of spectacles ('_unum Brillum_') on hisnose, and a book before him curiously written, and I saw at once thatit was neither in German nor Bohemian, nor yet in Latin. And I said tohim, 'Respected Doctor, what do they call that book?' He answered, 'Itis called the Greek Plutarch, and it treats of philosophy. ' And Isaid, 'Read some of it, for it must contain wonderful things. ' Then Isaw a little book, newly printed, lying on the floor, and I said tohim, 'Respected Doctor, what lies there?' He answered, 'It is acontroversial book, which a friend in Cologne sent me lately. It iswritten against me. The theologians in Cologne have printed it, andthey say that Johann Pfefferkorn wrote it. ' And I said, 'What will youdo about it? Will you not vindicate yourself?' And he answered, 'Certainly not. I have been vindicated long ago, and can spend no timeon these follies. My eyes are too weak for me to waste their strengthon matters which are not useful. '"

We next find Hutten high in the favor of the Emperor Maximilian, bywhose order he was crowned poet-laureate of Germany. The wreath oflaurel was woven by the fair hands of Constance Peutinger, who wascalled the handsomest girl in Germany, and with great ceremony she putthis wreath on his head in the presence of the Emperor at Mainz. 

Now, for the first time, Hutten seems to have thought seriously ofmarriage. He writes to a friend, Friedrich Fischer: "I am overcomewith a longing for rest, that I may give myself to art. For this, Ineed a wife who shall take care of me. You know my ways. I cannot bealone, not even by night. In vain they talk to me of the pleasures ofcelibacy. To me it is loneliness and monotony. I was not born forthat. I must have a being who can lead me from sorrows--yes, even frommy graver studies; one with whom I can joke and play, and carry onlight and happy conversations, that the sharpness of sorrow may beblunted and the heat of anger made mild. Give me a wife, dearFriedrich, and you know what kind of one I want. She must be young, pretty, well educated, serene, tender, patient. Money enough give her, but not too much. For riches I do not seek; and as for blood andbirth, she is already noble to whom Hutten gives his hand. "

A young woman--Cunigunde Glauburg--was found, and she seemed to meetall requirements. But the mother of the bride was not pleased with thearrangement. Hutten was a "dangerous man, " she said, "arevolutionist. " "I hope, " said Hutten, "that when she comes to knowme, and finds in me nothing restless, nothing mutinous, my studies fullof humor and wit, that she will look more kindly on me. " To a brotherof Cunigunde he writes: "Hutten has not conquered many cities, likesome of these iron-eaters, but through many lands has wandered with thefame of his name. He has not slain his thousands, like those, but maybe none the less loved for that. He does not stalk about on yard-longshin-bones, nor does his gigantic figure frighten travelers; but instrength of spirit he yields to none. He does not glow with thesplendor of beauty, but he dares flatter himself that his soul isworthy of love. He does not talk big nor swell himself with boasting, but simply, openly, honestly acts and speaks. "

But all his wooing came to naught; another man wedded the fairCunigunde, and the coming storm of Romish wrath left Hutten noopportunity to turn his attention elsewhere. 

The old Pope was now dead, and one of the famous family of Medici, inFlorence, had succeeded him as Leo the Tenth. Leo was kindly disposedtoward the Humanist studies, and Hutten, as poet of the Humanists, addressed to him directly a remarkable appeal, which made theturning-point in his life, for it placed him openly among those whoresisted the Pope. 

Recounting to the new Pope Leo all the usurpations which in hisjudgment had been made, one by one, by his predecessors--all therobberies, impositions, and abuses of the Papacy, from the time ofConstantine down--he appeals to Leo, as a wise man and a scholar, torestore stolen power and property, to correct all abuses, to abandonall temporal power, and become once more the simple Bishop of Rome. "For there can never be peace between the robber and the robbed tillthe stolen goods are returned. "

Now, for the first time, the work of Luther came to Hutten's attention. The disturbances at Wittenberg were in the beginning treated by all asa mere squabble of the monks. To Leo the Tenth this discussion had nofurther interest than this: "Brother Martin, " being a scholar, was mostprobably right. To Hutten, who cared nothing for doctrinal points, ithad no significance; the more monkish strifes the better--"the soonerwould the enemies eat each other up. "

But now Hutten came to recognize in Luther the apostle of freedom ofthought, and in that struggle of the Reformation he found a noblercause than that of the Humanists--in Luther a greater than Reuchlin. And Hutten never did things by halves. He entered into the warfareheart and soul. In 1520 he published his "Roman Trinity, " his gage ofbattle against Rome. 

He now, like Luther, began to draw his inspiration, as well as hislanguage, not from the classics, but from the New Testament. A newmotto he took for himself, one which was henceforth ever on his lips, and which appears again and again in his later writings: "_Jacta estalea_" ("the die is cast"); or, in the stronger German, in which hemore often gave it, "_Ich hab's gewagt_" ("I have dared it"). 

 "Auf dasz ichs nit anheb umsunst Wolauf, wir haben Gottes Gunst; Wer wollt in solchem bleiben dheim? Ich hab's gewagt! das ist mein Reim!"

 "Der niemand grössern Schaden bringt, Dann mir als noch die Sach gelingt Dahin mich Gott und Wahrheit bringt, Ich hab's gewagt. "

 "So breche ich hindurch, durch breche ich, oder ich falle, Kämpfend, nach dem ich einmal geworfen das Loos!"

 (So break I through the ranks else I die fighting-- Fighting, since once and forever the die I have cast!)

In this motto we have the keynote to his fiery and earnest nature. Convinced that a cause was right, he knew no bounds of caution orpolicy; he feared no prison or death. "I have dared it!"

"To all free men of Germany, " he speaks. "Their tyranny will not lastforever; unless all signs deceive me, their power is soon to fail--foralready is the axe laid at the root of the tree, and that tree whichbears not good fruit will be rooted out, and the vineyard of the Lordwill be purified. That you shall not only hope, but soon see with youreyes. Meanwhile, be of good cheer, you men of Germany. Not weak, notuntried, are your leaders in the struggle for freedom. Be not afraid, neither weaken in the midst of the battle, for broken at last is thestrength of the enemy, for the cause is righteous, and the rage oftyranny is already at its height. Courage, and farewell! Long livefreedom! I have dared it!" ("_Lebe die Freiheit; ich hab's gewagt_. ")

Warnings and threats innumerable came to Hutten, from enemies whofeared and hated, from friends who were fearful and trembling; but henever flinched: He had "dared it. " The bull of excommunication whichcame from the Pope frightened him no more than it did Luther. But atlast he was compelled to retire from the cities, and he took up hisabode in the Castle of Ebernburg, with Franz von Sickingen. 

Franz von Sickingen was one of the great nobles of Germany, and heruled over a region in the bend of the Rhine between Worms and Bingen. His was one of the bravest characters of that time. A knight of thehighest order, he became a disciple of Hutten and Luther, and on hishelp was the greatest reliance placed by the friends of the growingreform. His strong Castle of Ebernburg, on the hills above Bingen, wasthe refuge of all who were persecuted by the authorities. The "Inn ofRighteousness" ("_Herberge von Gerechtigkeit_"), the Ebernburg wascalled by Hutten. 

The Humanists who had stood with Hutten in the struggle betweenReuchlin and Pfefferkorn saw with growing concern the gradual transferof the field of battle from questions of literature to questions ofreligion. Reuchlin, growing old and weak, wrote a letter, disavowingany sympathy with the new uprisings against the time-honored authorityof the Church. This letter came into Hutten's hands, and, with all hisreverence for his old friend and master, he could not keep silence. 

"Eternal Gods!" he writes. "What do I see? Have you sunk so deep inweakness and fear, O Reuchlin! that you cannot endure blame even forthose who have fought for you in time of danger? Through such shamefulsubservience do you hope to reconcile those to whom, if you were a man, you would never give a friendly greeting, so badly have they treatedyou? Yet reconcile them; and if there is no other way, go to Rome andkiss the feet of Leo, and then write against us. Yet you shall seethat, against your will, and against the will of all the godlesscourtesans, we shall shake off the shameful yoke, and free ourselvesfrom slavery. I am ashamed that I have written so much for you--havedone so much for you, --since when it comes to action you have made sucha miserable exit from the ranks. From me shall you know henceforththat whether you fight in Luther's cause or throw yourself at the feetof the Bishop of Rome, I shall never trust you more. " The poor oldman, thus harassed on all sides, found no longer any rest or comfort inhis studies. Worn-out in body, and broken in spirit, he soon died. 

The great source of Luther's hold on Germany lay in his direct appealto the common people. For this he translated the Bible intoGerman--even now the noblest version of the Bible in existence. For intranslating a work of inspiration the intuition of a man like Luther, as Bayard Taylor has said, counts for more than the combinedscholarship of a hundred men learned in the Greek and Hebrew. "Theclear insight of one prophet is better than the average judgment offorty-seven scribes. " The German language was then struggling intoexistence, and scholars considered it beneath their notice. It wasfixed for all time by Luther's Bible. Luther often spent a week on asingle verse to find and fix the idiomatic German. "It is easy to plowwhen the field is cleared, " he said. "We must not ask the letters ofthe Latin alphabet how to speak German, but the mother in the kitchenand the plowman in the field, that they may know that the Bible isspeaking German, and speaking to them. Out of the abundance of theheart the mouth speaketh. No German peasant would understand that. Wemust make it plain to him. '_Wess das Herz voll ist, dess geht derMund über_. ' ('Whose heart is full, his mouth runs over. ')"

The same influence acted on Hutten. All his previous writings were inLatin, and were directed to scholars only. Henceforth he wrote thelanguage of the Fatherland, and his appeals to the people were inlanguage which the people could and did read. No Reformation ever camewhile only the learned and the noble were in the secret of it. 

 "Latein, ich vor geschrieben hab Das war ein jeden nicht bekannt; Jetzt schrei ich an das Vaterland, Teutsch Nation in ihrer Sprach Zu bringen diesen Dingen Rach. "

 ("For Latin wrote I hitherto, Which common people did not know. Now cry I to the Fatherland, The German people, in their tongue, Redress to bring for all these wrongs. ")

A song for the people he now wrote, the "New Song of Ulrich vonHutten, " a song which stands with Luther's "Em feste Burg" in thehistory of the Reformation:

 "Ich hab's gewagt mit Sinnen, Und trag des noch kein Reu, Mag ich nit dran gewinnen, Noch muss man spüren Treu. 

 "Darmit ich mein Mit eim allein, Wenn Man es wolt erkennen Dem Land zu gut Wiewol man thut Ein Pfaffenfeind mich nennen. "

Part of this may be freely translated--

 "With open eyes I have dared it; And cherish no regret, And though I fail to conquer, The Truth is with me yet. "

Hutten's dream in these days was of a league of nobles, cities, andpeople, aided by the Emperor if possible, against the Emperor ifnecessary, which should by force of arms forever free Germany from therule of the Pope. Luther had little faith in the power of force. "What Hutten wishes, " he wrote to a friend, "you see. But I do notwish to strive for the Gospel with murder and violence. Through thepower of the Word is the world subdued; through the Word the Churchshall be preserved and freed. Even Antichrist shall be destroyed bythe power of the Word. "

Now came the Great Diet at Worms, whither Luther was called before theEmperor to answer for his heretical teachings, and before which hestood firm and undaunted, a noble figure which has been a turning-pointin history. "Here I stand. I can do nothing else. God help me. "

Hutten, on his sick-bed at Ebernburg, not far away, was full of wrathat the trial of Luther. "Away!" he shouted, "away from the clearfountains, ye filthy swine! Out of the sanctuary, ye accursedpeddlers! Touch no longer the altar with your desecrating hands. Whathave ye to do with the alms of our fathers, which were given for thepoor and the Church, and you spend for splendor, pomp, and foolery, while the children suffer for bread? See you not that the wind ofFreedom[2] is blowing? On two men not much depends. Know that thereare many Luthers, many Huttens here. Should either of us be destroyed, still greater is the danger that awaits you; for then, with thosebattling for freedom, the avengers of innocence will make common cause. "

I have wished, in writing this little sketch, that I could have anovelist's privilege of bringing out my hero happily at the end. Ihave hitherto had the struggles of a man living before his time torelate; the voice of one crying in the wilderness. If this were aromance, I might tell how, with Hutten's entreaties and Luther'sexhortations, and under the wise management of Franz von Sickingen, thepeople banded together against foreign foes and foreign domination, andGerman unity, German freedom, and religious liberty were foreverestablished in the Fatherland. But, alas! the history does not run inthat way; at least not till a hundred years of war had bathed the landin blood. 

For Hutten henceforth I have only misery and failure to relate. Theunion of knights and cities resulted in a ruinous campaign of Franz vonSickingen against Trèves. Sickingen's army was driven back by theElector. His strong Castle of Landstühl was besieged by the Catholicprinces, and cannon was used in this siege for the first time inhistory. The walls of Landstühl, twenty-five feet thick, were battereddown, and Sickingen himself was killed by the falling of a beam. Thewar was over, and nothing worthy had been accomplished. 

When Luther heard of the death of Sickingen, he wrote to a friend:"Yesterday I heard and read of Franz von Sickingen's true and sadhistory. God is a righteous but marvelous Judge. Sickingen's fallseems to me a verdict of the Lord, that strengthens me in the beliefthat the force of arms is to be kept far from matters of the Gospel. "

Hutten was driven from the Ebernburg. He was offered a high place inthe service of the King of France; but, as a true German, he refusedit, and fled, penniless and sick, to Basle, in Switzerland. 

Here the great Humanist, Erasmus, reigned supreme. Erasmus disavowedall sympathy with his former friend and fellow-student. He calledHutten a dangerous and turbulent man, and warned the Swiss against him. Erasmus had noticed, with horror, in those who had studied Greek, thatthe influence of Lutheranism was fatal to learning; that zeal forphilology decreased as zeal for religion increased. Already Erasmus, like Reuchlin, was ranged on the side of the Pope. So, in letters andpamphlets, Erasmus attacked Hutten; and the poet was not slow in givingas good as he received. And this war between the Humanist and theReformer gave great joy to the Obscurantists, who feared and hated themboth. 

"Humanism, " says Strauss, "was broad-minded but faint-hearted, and innone is this better seen than in Erasmus. Luther was a narrower man, but his unvarying purpose, never looking to left nor right, was hisstrength. Humanism is the broad mirror-like Rhine at Bingen. It mustgrow narrower and wilder before it can break through the mountains tothe sea. "

Repulsed by Erasmus at Basle, Hutten fled to Mülhausen. Attacked byassassins there, he left at midnight for Zürich, where he put himselfunder the protection of Ulrich Zwingli. In Zwingli, the purest, loftiest, and clearest of insight of all of the leaders of theReformation, Hutten found a congenial spirit. His health was nowutterly broken. To the famous Baths of Pfaffers he went, in hope ofrelease from pain. But the modern bath-houses of Ragatz were not builtin those days, and the daily descent by a rope from above into the darkand dismal chasm was too much for his feeble strength. Then Zwinglisent him to a kindly friend, the Pastor Hans Schnegg, who lived on thelittle Island of Ufnau, in the Lake of Zürich. And here at Ufnau, wornout by his long, double conflict with the Pope and with disease, Ulrichvon Hutten died in 1523, at the age of thirty-five. "He left behindhim, " wrote Zwingli, "nothing of worth. Books he had none; no money, and no property of any sort, except a pen. "

[Illustration: Ulrich Zwingli. ]

What was the value of this short and troubled life? Three hundredyears ago it was easy to answer with Erasmus and the rest--Nothing. Hutten had denounced the Pope, and the Pope had crushed him. He hadstirred up noble men to battle for freedom, and they, too, had beendestroyed. Franz von Sickingen was dead. The league of the cities andprinces had faded away forever. Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, noone knew where, and scarcely a trace of the Reformation was left inGermany. Whatever Hutten had touched he had ruined. He had "daredit, " and the force he had defied had crushed him in return. 

But, looking back over these centuries, the life of Hutten rises intohigher prominence. His writings were seed in good ground. At hisdeath the Reformation seemed hopeless. Six years later, at the secondDiet of Spires, half Germany signed the protest which made usProtestants. "It was Luther alone who said _no_ at the Diet of Worms. It was princes and people, cities and churches, who said _no_ at theDiet of Spires. "

Hutten's dream of a United German people freed from the yoke of Romewas for three hundred years unrealized. For the Reformation sunderedthe German people and ruined the German Empire, and not till our dayhas German unity come to pass. But, as later reformers said, "It isbetter that Germany should be half German, than that it should be allRoman. "

For the true meaning of this conflict does not lie in any question ofchurch against church or creed against creed, nor that worship incathedrals with altars and incense and rich ceremony should give way tothe simpler forms of the Lutheran litany. The issue was that of thegrowth of man. The "right of private interpretation" is therecognition of personal individuality. 

The death of Hutten was, after all, not untimely. He had done hiswork. His was the "voice of one crying in the wilderness. " The headof John the Baptist lay on the charger before Jesus had fulfilled hismission. Arnold Winkelried, at Sempach, filled his body with Austrianspears before the Austrian phalanx was broken. John Brown fell atHarper's Ferry before a blow was struck against slavery. Ulrich vonHutten had set every man, woman, and child in Germany to thinking ofhis relations to the Lord and to the Pope. His mission was completed;and longer life for him, as Strauss has suggested, might have led todiscord among the Reformers themselves. 

For this lover of freedom was intolerant of intolerance. For finepoints of doctrine he had only contempt. When the Lutherans began totreat as enemies all Reformers who did not with them subscribe to theConfession of Augsburg, Hutten's fiery pen would have repudiated thisconfession. For he fought for freedom of the spirit, not for theLutheran confession. 

Had he remained in Switzerland, he would have been still less inharmony with the prevailing conditions. Not long after, Zwingli wasslain in the wretched battle of Kappel, and, after him, the SwissReformation passed under the control of John Calvin. There can be nodoubt that the stern pietist of Geneva would have burned Ulrich vonHutten with as calm a conscience as he did Michael Servetus. 

The idea of a united and uniform Church, whether Catholic, Lutheran, orCalvinist, had little attraction for Hutten. He was one of the firstto realize that religion is individual, not collective. It isconcerned with life, not with creeds or ceremonies. In the high sense, no man can follow or share the religion of another. His religion, whatever it may be, is his own. It is built up from his own thoughtsand prayers and actions. It is the expression of his own ideals. Onlyforms can be transferred unchanged from man to man, from generation togeneration; never realities. For whatever is real to a man becomespart of him and partakes of his growth, and is modified by hispersonality. 

Hutten was buried where he died, on the little island of Ufnau, in theLake of Zürich, at the foot of the mighty Alps. And some of his oldassociates put over his grave a commemorative stone. Afterwards, themonks of the abbey of Einsiedein, in Schwytz came to the island andremoved the stone, and obliterated all traces of the grave. 

It was well that they did so; for now the whole green island of Ufnauis his alone, and it is his worthy sepulcher. 

[1] For many of the details of the life of Hutten, and for most of thequotations from Hutten's writings given in this paper, the writer isindebted to the excellent memoir by David Friedrich Strauss, entitled"Ulrich von Hutten. " (Fourth Edition: Bonn, 1878. ) No attempt has beenmade to give here an account of Hutten's writings, only a few of themore noteworthy being mentioned. 

[2] "Sehet ihr nicht dasz die Luft der Freiheit weht?"

NATURE-STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE. [1]

In pleading for nature-study as a means of moral culture, I do not wishto make an overstatement, nor to claim for such study any occult orexclusive power. It is not for us to say, so much nature in theschools, so much virtue in the scholars. The character of the teacheris a factor which must always be counted in. But the best teacher isthe one that comes nearest to nature, the one who is most effective indeveloping individual wisdom. 

To seek knowledge is better than to have knowledge. Precepts of virtueare useless unless they are built into life. At birth, or before, "thegate of gifts is closed. " It is the art of life, out of variant andcontradictory materials passed down to us from our ancestors, to buildup a coherent and effective individual character. 

The essence of character-building lies in action. The chief value ofnature-study in character-building is that, like life itself, it dealswith realities. The experience of living is of itself a form ofnature-study. One must in life make his own observations, frame hisown inductions, and apply them in action as he goes along. The habitof finding out the best thing to do next, and then doing it, is thebasis of character. A strong character is built up by doing, not byimitation, nor by feeling, nor by suggestion. Nature-study, if it begenuine, is essentially doing. This is the basis of its effectivenessas a moral agent. To deal with truth is necessary, if we are to knowtruth when we see it in action. To know truth precedes all soundmorality. There is a great impulse to virtue in knowing somethingwell. To know it well, is to come into direct contact with its factsor laws, to feel that its qualities and forces are inevitable. To dothis is the essence of nature-study in all its forms. 

The claim has been made that history treats of the actions of men, andthat it therefore gives the student the basis of right conduct. Butneither of these propositions is true. History treats of the recordsof the acts of men and nations. But it does not involve the action ofthe student himself. The men and women who act in history are not theboys and girls we are training. Their lives are developed throughtheir own efforts, not by contemplation of the efforts of others. Theywork out their problem of action more surely by dissecting frogs orhatching butterflies than by what we tell them of Lycurgus or Joan ofArc. Their reason for virtuous action must lie in their own knowledgeof what is right, not in the fact that Lincoln, or Washington, orWilliam Tell, or some other half-mythical personage would have done soand so under like conditions. 

The rocks and shells, the frogs and lilies always tell the absolutetruth. Association with these, under right direction, will build up ahabit of truthfulness, which the lying story of the cherry-tree ispowerless to effect. If history is to be made an agency for moraltraining, it must become a nature-study. It must be the study oforiginal documents. When it is pursued in this way it has the value ofother nature-studies. But it is carried on under great limitations. Its manuscripts are scarce, while every leaf on the tree is an originaldocument in botany. When a thousand are used, or used up, the archivesof nature are just as full as ever. 

From the intimate affinity with the problems of life, the problems ofnature-study derive a large part of their value. Because life dealswith realities, the visible agents of the overmastering fates, it iswell that our children should study the real, rather than theconventional. Let them come in contact with the inevitable, instead ofthe "made-up, " with laws and forces which can be traced in objects andforms actually before them, rather than with those which seem arbitraryor which remain inscrutable. To use concrete illustrations, there is agreater moral value in the study of magnets than in the distinctionbetween _shall_ and _will_, in the study of birds or rocks than in thatof diacritical marks or postage-stamps, in the development of a frogthan in the longer or the shorter catechism, in the study of thingsthan in the study of abstractions. There is doubtless a law underlyingabstractions and conventionalities, a law of catechisms, orpostage-stamps, or grammatical solecisms, but it does not appear to thestudent. Its consideration does not strengthen his impression ofinevitable truth. There is the greatest moral value, as well asintellectual value, in the independence that comes from knowing, andknowing that one knows and why he knows. This gives spinal column tocharacter, which is not found in the flabby goodness of imitation orthe hysteric virtue of suggestion. Knowing what is right, and why itis right, before doing it is the basis of greatness of character. 

The nervous system of the animal or the man is essentially a device tomake action effective and to keep it safe. The animal is a machine inaction. Toward the end of motion all other mental processes tend. Allfunctions of the brain, all forms of nerve impulse are modifications ofthe simple reflex action, the automatic transfer of sensations derivedfrom external objects into movements of the body. 

The sensory nerves furnish the animal or man all knowledge of theexternal world. The brain, sitting in absolute darkness, judges thesesensations, and sends out corresponding impulses to action. Thesensory nerves are the brain's sole teachers; the motor nerves, andthrough them the muscles, are the brain's only servants. The untrainedbrain learns its lessons poorly, and its commands are vacillating andineffective. In like manner, the brain which has been misued[Transcriber's note: misused?], shows its defects in ill-chosenactions--the actions against which Nature protests through her scourgeof misery. In this fact, that nerve alteration means ineffectiveaction, lying brain, and lying nerves, rests the great argument fortemperance, the great argument against all forms of nerve tampering, from the coffee habit to the cataleptic "revival of religion. "

The senses are intensely practical in their relation to life. Theprocesses of natural selection make and keep them so. Only thosephases of reality which our ancestors could render into action areshown to us by our senses. If we can do nothing in any case, we knownothing about it. The senses tell us essential truth about rocks andtrees, food and shelter, friends and enemies. They answer no problemsin chemistry. They tell us nothing about atom or molecule. They giveus no ultimate facts. Whatever is so small that we cannot handle it istoo small to be seen. Whatever is too distant to be reached is nottruthfully reported. The "X-rays" of light we cannot see, because ourancestors could not deal with them. The sun and stars, the clouds andthe sky are not at all what they appear to be. The truthfulness of thesenses fails as the square of the distance increases. Were it not so, we should be smothered by truth; we should be overwhelmed by themultiplicity of our own sensations, and truthful response in actionwould become impossible. Hyperaesthesia of any or all of the senses isa source of confusion, not of strength. It is essentially a phase ofdisease, and it shows itself in ineffectiveness, not in increased power. 

Besides the actual sensations, the so-called realities, the brainretains also the sensations which have been, and which are not whollylost. Memory-pictures crowd the mind, mingling with pictures which arebrought in afresh by the senses. The force of suggestion causes themental states or conditions of one person to repeat themselves inanother. Abnormal conditions of the brain itself furnish anotherseries of feelings with which the brain must deal. Moreover, the brainis charged with impulses to action passed on from generation togeneration, surviving because they are useful. With all these arisesthe necessity for choice as a function of the mind. The mind mustneglect or suppress all sensations which it cannot weave into action. The dog sees nothing that does not belong to its little world. The manin search of mushrooms "tramples down oak-trees in his walks. " Toselect the sensations that concern us is the basis of the power ofattention. The suppression of undesired actions is a function of thewill. To find data for choice among the possible motor responses is afunction of the intellect. Intellectual persistency is the essence ofindividual character. 

As the conditions of life become more complex, it becomes necessary foraction to be more carefully selected. Wisdom is the parent of virtue. Knowing what should be done logically precedes doing it. Good impulsesand good intentions do not make action right or safe. In the long run, action is tested not by its motives, but by its results. 

The child, when he comes into the world, has everything to learn. Hisnervous system is charged with tendencies to reaction and impulses tomotion, which have their origin in survivals from ancestral experience. Exact knowledge, by which his own actions can be made exact, must comethrough his own experience. The experience of others must be expressedin terms of his own before it becomes wisdom. Wisdom, as I haveelsewhere said, is knowing what it is best to do next. Virtue is doingit. Doing right becomes habit, if it is pursued long enough. Itbecomes a "second nature, " or, we may say, a higher heredity. Theformation of a higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing rightand doing right, is the basis of character-building. 

The moral character is based on knowing the best, choosing the best, and doing the best. It cannot be built up on imitation. By imitation, suggestion, and conventionality the masses are formed and controlled. To build up a man is a nobler process, demanding materials and methodsof a higher order. The growth of man is the assertion ofindividuality. Only robust men can make history. Others may adorn it, disfigure it, or vulgarize it. 

The first relation of the child to external things is expressed inthis: What can I do with it? What is its relation to me? Thesensation goes over into thought, the thought into action. Thus theimpression of the object is built into the little universe of his mind. The object and the action it implies are closely associated. As moreobjects are apprehended, more complex relations arise, but the primalcondition remains--What can I do with it? Sensation, thought, action--this is the natural sequence of each completed mental process. As volition passes over into action, so does science into art, knowledge into power, wisdom into virtue. 

By the study of realities wisdom is built up. In the relations ofobjects he can touch and move, the child comes to find the limitationsof his powers, the laws that govern phenomena, and to which his actionsmust be in obedience. So long as he deals with realities, these lawsstand in their proper relation. "So simple, so natural, so true, " saysAgassiz. "This is the charm of dealing with Nature herself. Shebrings us back to absolute truth so often as we wander. "

So long as a child is lead from one reality to another, never lost inwords or in abstractions, so long this natural relation remains. Whatcan I do with it? is the beginning of wisdom. What is it to me? is thebasis of personal virtue. 

While a child remains about the home of his boyhood, he knows which wayis north and which is east. He does not need to orientate himself, because in his short trips he never loses his sense of space direction. But let him take a rapid journey in the cars or in the night, and hemay find himself in strange relations. The sun no longer rises in theeast, the sense of reality in directions is gone, and it is a painfuleffort for him to join the new impressions to the old. The process oforientation is a difficult one, and if facing the sunrise in themorning were a deed of necessity in his religion, this deed would notbe accurately performed. 

This homely illustration applies to the child. He is taken from hislittle world of realities, a world in which the sun rises in the east, the dogs bark, the grasshopper leaps, the water falls, and the relationof cause and effect appear plain and natural. In these simplerelations moral laws become evident. "The burnt child dreads thefire, " and this dread shows itself in action. The child learns what todo next, and to some extent does it. By practice in personalresponsibility in little things, he can be led to wisdom in large ones. For the power to do great things in the moral world comes from doingthe right in small things. It is not often that a man who knows thatthere is a right does the wrong. Men who do wrong are either ignorantthat there is a right, or else they have failed in their orientationand look upon right as wrong. It is the clinching of good purposeswith good actions that makes the man. This is the higher heredity thatis not the gift of father or mother, but is the man's own work onhimself. 

The impression of realities is the basis of sound morals as well as ofsound judgment. By adding near things to near, the child grows inknowledge. "Knowledge set in order" is science. Nature-study is thebeginning of science. It is the science of the child. To the childtraining in methods of acquiring knowledge is more valuable thanknowledge itself. In general, throughout life sound methods are morevaluable than sound information. Self-direction is more important thaninnocence. The fool may be innocent. Only the sane and wise can bevirtuous. 

It is the function of science to find out the real nature of theuniverse. Its purpose is to eliminate the personal equation and thehuman equation in statements of truth. By methods of precision ofthought and instruments of precision in observation, it seeks to makeour knowledge of the small, the distant, the invisible, the mysteriousas accurate as our knowledge of the common things men have handled forages. It seeks to make our knowledge of common things exact andprecise, that exactness and precision may be translated into action. The ultimate end of science, as well as its initial impulse, is theregulation of human conduct. To make right action possible andprevalent is the function of science. The "world as it is" is theprovince of science. In proportion as our actions conform to theconditions of the world as it is, do we find the world beautiful, glorious, divine. The truth of the "world as it is" must be theultimate inspiration of art, poetry, and religion. The world as menhave agreed to say it is, is quite another matter. The less ourchildren hear of this, the less they will have to unlearn in theirfuture development. 

When a child is taken from nature to the schools, he is usually broughtinto an atmosphere of conventionality. Here he is not to do, but toimitate; not to see, nor to handle, nor to create, but to remember. Heis, moreover, to remember not his own realities, but the written orspoken ideas of others. He is dragged through a wilderness of grammar, with thickets of diacritical marks, into the desert of metaphysics. Heis taught to do right, not because right action is in the nature ofthings, the nature of himself and the things about him, but because hewill be punished somehow if he does not. 

He is given a medley of words without ideas. He is taught declensionsand conjugations without number in his own and other tongues. Helearns things easily by rote; so his teachers fill him withrote-learning. Hence, grammar and language have become stereotyped asteaching without a thought as to whether undigested words may beintellectual poison. And as the good heart depends on the good brain, undigested ideas become moral poison as well. No one can tell how muchof the bad morals and worse manners of the conventional college boy ofthe past has been due to intellectual dyspepsia from undigested words. 

In such manner the child is bound to lose his orientation as to theforces which surround him. If he does not recover it, he will spendhis life in a world of unused fancies and realities. Nonsense willseem half truth, and his appreciation of truth will be vitiated by lackof clearness of definition--by its close relation to nonsense. 

That this is no slight defect can be shown in every community. Thereis no intellectual craze so absurd as not to have a following amongeducated men and women. There is no scheme for the renovation of thesocial order so silly that educated men will not invest their money init. There is no medical fraud so shameless that educated men will notgive it their certificate. There is no nonsense so unscientific thatmen called educated will not accept it as science. 

It should be a function of the schools to build up common sense. Follyshould be crowded out of the schools. We have furnished costly lunaticasylums for its accommodation. That our schools are in a degreeresponsible for current follies, there can be no doubt. We have manyteachers who have never seen a truth in their lives. There are manywho have never felt the impact of an idea. There are many who havelost their own orientation in their youth, and who have never sincebeen able to point out the sunrise to others. It is no extravagance oflanguage to say that diacritical marks lead to the cocaine habit; northat the ethics of metaphysics points the way to the HigherFoolishness. There are many links in the chain of decadence, but itsfinger-posts all point downward. 

"Three roots bear up Dominion--Knowledge, Will, the third, Obedience. "This statement, which Lowell applies to nations, belongs to theindividual man as well. It is written in the structure of hisbrain--knowledge, volition, action, --and all three elements must besound, if action is to be safe or effective. 

But obedience must be active, not passive. The obedience of the loweranimals is automatic, and therefore in its limits measurably perfect. Lack of obedience means the extinction of the race. Only the obedientsurvive, and hence comes about obedience to "sealed orders, " obedienceby reflex action, in which the will takes little part. 

In the early stages of human development, the instincts of obediencewere dominant. Great among these is the instinct of conventionality, by which each man follows the path others have found safe. The Churchand the State, organizations of the strong, have assumed the directionof the weak. It has often resulted that the wiser this direction, thegreater the weakness it was called on to control. The "sealed orders"of human institutions took the place of the automatism of instinct. Against "sealed orders" the individual man has been in constantprotest. The "warfare of science" was part of this long struggle. TheReformation, the revival of learning, the growth of democracy, are allphases of this great conflict. 

The function of democracy is not good government. If that were all, itwould not deserve the efforts spent on it. Better government than anyking or congress or democracy has yet given could be had in simpler andcheaper ways. The automatic scheme of competitive examinations wouldgive us better rulers at half the present cost. Even an ordinaryintelligence office, or "statesman's employment bureau, " would serve usbetter than conventions and elections. But a people which could beruled in that way, content to be governed well by forces outsideitself, would not be worth the saving. But this is not the point atissue. Government too good, as well as too bad, may have a banefulinfluence on men. Its character is a secondary matter. The purpose ofself-government is to intensify individual responsibility; to promoteabortive attempts at wisdom, through which true wisdom may come atlast. Democracy is nature-study on a grand scale. The republic is ahuge laboratory of civics, a laboratory in which strange experimentsare performed; but by which, as in other laboratories, wisdom may arisefrom experience, and having arisen, may work itself out into virtue. 

"The oldest and best-endowed university in the world, " Dr. Parkhursttells us, "is Life itself. Problems tumble easily apart in the fieldthat refuse to give up their secret in the study, or even in thecloset. Reality is what educates us, and reality never comes so closeto us, with all its powers of discipline, as when we encounter it inaction. In books we find Truth in black and white; but in the rush ofevents we see Truth at work. It is only when Truth is busy and we areourselves mixed up in its activities that we learn to know of how muchwe are capable, or even the power by which these capabilities can bemade over into effect. "

Mr. Wilbur F. Jackman has well said: "Children always start withimitation, and very few people ever get beyond it. The true moral act, however, is one performed in accordance with a known law that is justas natural as the law which determines which way a stone shall fall. The individual becomes moral in the highest sense when he chooses toobey this law by acting in accordance with it. " Conventionality is notmorality, and may co-exist with vice as well as with virtue. Obediencehas little permanence unless it be intelligent obedience. 

It is, of course, true that wrong information may lead sometimes toright action, as falsehood may secure obedience to a natural law whichwould otherwise have been violated. But in the long run men andnations pay dearly for every illusion they cherish. For every sick manhealed at Denver or Lourdes, ten well men may be made sick. Faith cureand patent medicines feed on the same victim. For every Schlatter whois worshiped as a saint, some equally harmless lunatic will be stonedas a witch. This scientific age is beset by the non-science which itsaltruism has made safe. The development of the common sense of thepeople has given security to a vast horde of follies, which would bedestroyed in the unchecked competition of life. It is the soundness ofour age which has made what we call its decadence possible. It is theundercurrent of science which has given security to human life, asecurity which obtains for fools as well as for sages. 

For protection against all these follies which so soon fall into vices, or decay into insanity, we must look to the schools. A soundrecognition of cause and effect in human affairs is our best safeguard. The old common sense of the "un-high-schooled man, " aided byinstruments of precision, and directed by logic, must be carried overinto the schools. Clear thinking and clean acting, we believe, areresults of the study of nature. When men have made themselves wise, inthe wisdom which may be completed in action, they have never failed tomake themselves good. When men have become wise with the lore ofothers, the learning which ends in self, and does not spend itself inaction, they have been neither virtuous nor happy. "Much learning is aweariness of the flesh. " Thought without action ends in intensefatigue of soul, the disgust with all the "sorry scheme of thingsentire, " which is the mark of the unwholesome and insane philosophy ofPessimism. This philosophy finds its condemnation in the fact that ithas never yet been translated into pure and helpful life. 

With our children, the study of words and abstractions alone may, inits degree, produce the same results. Nature-studies have long beenvalued as a "means of grace, " because they arouse the enthusiasm, thelove of work which belongs to open-eyed youth. The child _blasé_ withmoral precepts and irregular conjugations turns with delight to theunrolling of ferns and the song of birds. There is a moral training inclearness and tangibility. An occult impulse to vice is hidden in allvagueness and in all teachings meant to be heard but not to beunderstood. Nature is never obscure, never occult, never esoteric. She must be questioned in earnest, else she will not reply. But toevery serious question she returns a serious answer. "Simple, natural, and true" should make the impression of simplicity and truth. Truthand virtue are but opposite sides of the same shield. As leaves passover into flowers, and flowers into fruit, so are wisdom, virtue, andhappiness inseparably related. 

[1] Read before the National Educational Association at Buffalo, NewYork, 1896. 

THE HIGHER SACRIFICE. [1]

Each man that lives is, in part, a slave, because he is a living being. This belongs to the definition of life itself. Each creature must bendits back to the lash of its environment. We imagine life withoutconditions--life free from the pressure of insensate things outside usor within. But such life is the dream of the philosopher. We havenever known it. The records of the life we know are full ofconcessions to such pressure. 

The vegetative part of life, that part which finds its expression inphysical growth, and sustenance, and death, must always be slavery. The old primal hunger of the protoplasm rules over it all. Each of themyriad cells of which man is made must be fed and cared for. Theperennial hunger of these cells he must stifle. This hunger began whenlife began. It will cease only when life ceases. It will last tillthe water of the sea is drained, the great lights are put out, and theuseless earth is hung up empty in the archives of the universe. 

This old hunger the individual man must each day meet and satisfy. Hemust do this for himself; else, in the long run, it will not be done. If others help feed him, he must feed others in return. This return isnot charity nor sacrifice; it is simply exchange of work. It is thedivision of labor in servitude. Directly or indirectly, each must payhis debt of life. There are a few, as the world goes, who in luxury orpauperism have this debt paid for them by others. But there are notmany of these fugitive slaves. The number will never be great; for thelineage of idleness is never long nor strong. 

When this debt is paid, the slave becomes the man. Nature counts asmen only those who are free. Freedom springs from within. No outsidepower can give it. Board and lodging on the earth once paid, a man'sresources are his own. These he can give or hold. By the fullness ofthese is he measured. All acquisitions of man, Emerson tells us, "arevictories of the good brain and brave heart; the world belongs to theenergetic, belongs to the wise. It is in vain to make a paradise butfor good men. "

In the ancient lore of the Jews, so Rabbi Voorsanger tells us, it iswritten, "Serve the Lord, not as slaves hoping for reward, but as godswho will take no reward. " The meaning of the old saying is this: _Onlythe gods can serve_. 

Those who have nothing have nothing to give. He who serves as a slaveserves himself only. That he hopes for a reward shows that to himselfhis service is really given. To serve the Lord, according to anotherold saying, is to help one's fellow-men. The Eternal asks not ofmortals that they assist Him with His earth. The tough old world hasbeen His for centuries of centuries before it came to be ours, and wecan neither make it nor mar it. We were not consulted when itsfoundations were laid in the deep. The waves and the storms, thesunshine and the song of birds need not our aid. They will take careof themselves. Life is the only material that is plastic in our hand. Only man can be helped by man. 

When they hung John Brown in Virginia, many said, you remember, that inresisting the Government he had thrown away his life, and would gainnothing for it. He could not, as Thoreau said at the time, get a voteof thanks or a pair of boots for his life. He could not getfour-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year around. But hewas not asking for a vote of thanks. It was not for thefour-and-sixpence a day that he stood between brute force and itsvictims. It was to show men the nature of slavery. It was to help hisfellow-citizens to read the story of their institutions in the light ofhistory. "You can get more, " Thoreau went on to say, "in your market[at Concord] for a quart of milk than you can for a quart of blood; butyours is not the market heroes carry their blood to. " The blood ofheroes is not sold by the quart. The great, strong, noble, and pure ofthis world, those who have made our race worthy to be called men, havenot been paid by the day or by the quart; not by riches, nor fame, norpower, nor anything that man can give. Out of the fullness of theirlives have they served the Lord. Out of the wealth of their resourceshave they helped their fellow-men. 

The great man cannot be a self-seeker. The greatness of a Napoléon oran Alexander is the greatness of gluttony. It is slavery on a grandscale. What men have done for their own glory or aggrandizement hasleft no permanent impress. "I have carried out nothing, " says thewarrior, Sigurd Slembe. "I have not sown the least grain nor laid onestone upon another to witness that I have lived. " Napoléon could havesaid as much, if, like Sigurd, he had stood "upon his own grave andheard the great bell ring. " The tragedy of the Isle of St. Helena laynot in the failure of effort, but in the futility of the aim to whicheffort was directed. There was no tragedy of the Isle of Patmos. 

What such men have torn down remains torn down. All this would soonhave fallen of itself; for that which has life in it cannot bedestroyed by force. But what such men have built has fallen when theirhands have ceased to hold it up. The names history cherishes are thoseof men of another type. Only "a man too simply great to scheme for hisproper self" is great enough to become a pillar of the ages. 

It is part of the duty of higher education to build up ideals of noblefreedom. It is not for help in the vegetative work of life that you goto college. You are just as good a slave without it. You can earnyour board and lodging without the formality of culture. The trainingof the college will make your power for action greater, no doubt; butit will also magnify your needs. The debt of life a scholar has to payis greater than that paid by the clown. And the higher sacrifice thescholar may be called upon to make grows with the increased fullness ofhis life. Greater needs go with greater power, and both mean greateropportunity for sacrifice. 

In the days you have been with us you should have formed some ideals. You should have bound these ideals together with the chain of"well-spent yesterdays, " the higher heredity which comes not from yourancestors, but which each man must build up for himself. You shouldhave done something in the direction of the life of higher sacrifice, the life that from the fullness of its resources can have something togive. 

Such sacrifice is not waste, but service; not spending, butaccomplishing. Many men, and more women, spend their lives for otherswhen others would have been better served if they had saved themselves. Mere giving is not service. "Charity that is irrational and impulsivegiving, is a waste, whether of money or of life. " "Charity createshalf the misery she relieves; she cannot relieve half the misery shecreates. "

The men you meet as you leave these halls will not understand yourideals. They will not know that your life is not bound up in thepresent, but has something to ask or to give for the future. Till theyunderstand you they will not yield you their sympathies. They may jeerat you because the whip they respond to leaves no mark upon you. Theywill try to buy you, because the Devil has always bid high for thelives of young men with ideals. A man in his market stands alwaysabove par. Slaves are his stock in trade. If a man of power can behad for base purposes, he can be sure of an immediate reward. You cansell your blood for its weight in milk, or for its weight ingold--whatever you choose, --if you are willing to put it up for sale. You can sell your will for the kingdoms of the earth; and you will see, or seem to see, many of your associates making just such bargains. Butin this be not deceived. No young man worthy of anything else eversold himself to the Devil. These are dummy sales. The Devil puts hisown up at auction in hope of catching others. If you fall into hishands, you had not far to fall. You were already ripe for his clutches. 

When a man steps forth from the college, he is tested once for all. Ittakes but a year or two to prove his mettle. In the college highideals prevail, and the intellectual life is taken as a matter ofcourse. In the world outside it appears otherwise, though theconditions of success are in fact just the same. It is not true, though it seems so, that the common life is a game of "grasping andgriping, with a whine for mercy at the end of it. " It is your ownfault if you find it so. It is not true that the whole of man isoccupied, with the effort "to live just asking but to live, to livejust begging but to be. " The world of thought and the world of actionare one in nature. In both truth and love are strength, and folly andselfishness are weakness. There is no confusion of right and wrong inthe mind of the Fates. It is only in our poor bewildered slaveintellects that evil passes for power. All about us in the press oflife are real men, "whose fame is not bought nor sold at the stroke ofa politician's pen. " Such are the men in whose guidance the currentsof history flow. 

The lesson of values in life it should be yours to teach, because itshould be yours to know and to act. Men are better than they seem, andthe hidden virtues of life appear when men have learned how totranslate them into action. Men grasp and hoard material thingsbecause in their poverty of soul they know of nothing else to do. Itis lack of training and lack of imagination, rather than totaldepravity, which gives our social life its sordid aspect. When a planthas learned the secret of flowers and fruit, it no longer goes onadding meaningless leaf on leaf. And as "flowers are only coloredleaves, fruits only ripe ones, " so are the virtues only perfected andripened forms of those impulses which show themselves as vices. 

It is your relation to the overflow of power that determines the mannerof man you are. Slave or god, it is for you to choose. Slave or god, it is for you to will. It is for such choice that will is developed. Say what we may about the limitations of the life of man, they arelargely self-limitations. Hemmed in is human life by the force of theFates; but the will of man is one of the Fates, and can take its placeby the side of the rest of them. The man who can will is a factor inthe universe. Only the man who can will can serve the Lord at all, andby the same token, hoping for no reward. 

Likewise is love a factor in the universe. Power is not strength ofbody or mind alone. One who is poor in all else, may be rich insympathy and responsiveness. "They also serve who only stand and wait. "

In a recent number of The Dial, Mr. W. P. Reeves tells us the tale, half-humorous, half-allegorical, of the decadence of a scholar. According to this story, one Thomson was a college graduate, full ofhigh notions of the significance of life and the duties and privilegesof the scholar. With these ideals he went to Germany, that he mightstrengthen them and use them for the benefit of his fellow-men. Hespent some years in Germany, filling his mind with all that Germanphilosophy could give. Then he came home, to turn his philosophy intoaction. To do this, he sought a college professorship. 

This he found it was not easy to secure. Nobody cared for him or hismessage. The authority of "wise and sober Germany" was not recognizedin the institutions of America, and he found that collegeprofessorships were no longer "plums to be picked" by whomsoever shouldask for them. The reverence the German professor commands is unknownin America. In Germany, the authority of wise men is supreme. Theirwords, when they speak, are heard with reverence and attention. InAmerica, wisdom is not wisdom till the common man has examined it andpronounced it to be such. The conclusions of the scholar are revisedby the daily newspaper. The readers of these papers care little formessages from Utopia. 

No college opened its doors to Thomson, and he saw with dismay that thelife before him was one of discomfort and insignificance, his idealshaving no exchangeable value in luxuries or comforts. Meanwhile, Thomson's early associates seemed to get on somehow. The world wantedtheir cheap achievements, though it did not care for him. 

Among these associates was one Wilcox, who became a politician, and, though small in abilities and poor in virtues, his influence among menseemed to be unbounded. The young woman who had felt an interest inThomson's development, and to whom he had read his rejected verses andhis uncalled-for philosophy, had joined herself to the Philistines, andyielded to their influence. She had become Wilcox's wife. His friendsregarded Thomson's failure as a joke. He must not take himself tooseriously, they said. A man should be in touch with his times. "EvenPhilistia, " one said, "has its aesthetic ritual and pageantry. " A wiseman will not despise this ritual, because Philistinism, after all, isthe life of the world. 

But Thomson held out. "I pledged my word in Germany, " he said, "toteach nothing that I did not believe to be true. I must live up tothis pledge. " And so he sought for positions, and he failed to findthem. Finally, he had a message from a friend that a professorship ina certain institution was vacant. This message said, "CultivateWilcox. " So, in despair, Thomson began to cultivate Wilcox. He beganto feel that Wilcox was a type of the world, a bad world, for which hewas not responsible. The world's servant he must be, if he receivedits wages. When he secured the coveted appointment, through thepolitical pull of Wilcox and the mild kindness of Mrs. Wilcox, he wasready to teach whatever was wanted of him, whether it was truth inGermany or not. He found that he could change his notions of truth. The Wilcox idea was that everything in America is all right just as itis. To this he found it easy to respond. His salary helped him to doso. And at last, the record says, he became "_laudator temporisacti_, " one who praises the times that are past. As such, he took butlittle part in the times that are to be. 

So runs the allegory. How shall it be with you? There are manyThomsons among our scholars. There may be some such among you. Whenyou pass from the world of thought you will find yourself in the worldof action. The conditions are not changed, but they seem to bechanged. How shall you respond to the seeming difference? Shall yougive up the truth of high thinking for the appearance of speedysuccess? If you do this, it will not be because you are worldly-wise, but because you do not know the world. In your ignorance of men youmay sell yourself cheaply. 

One must know life before he can know truth. He who will be a leaderof men must first have the power to lead himself. The world is selfishand unsympathetic. But it is also sagacious. It rejects as worthlesshim who suffers decadence when he comes in contact with its vulgarcleverness. The natural man can look the world in the face. The trueman will teach truth wherever he is, --not because he has pledgedhimself in Germany not to teach anything else, but because in teachingtruth he is teaching himself. His life thus becomes genuine, and, sooner or later, the world will respond to genuineness in action. Theworld knows the value of genuineness, and it yields to that forcewherever it is felt. "The world is all gates, " says Emerson, "allopportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck. "

Thus, in the decadence of Thomson, it was not the times or the world orAmerica that was at fault; it was Thomson himself. He had in him nolife of his own. His character, like his microscope, "was made inGermany, " and bore not his mark, but the stamp of the German factory. Truth was not made in Germany; and to know or to teach truth there mustbe a life behind it. The decadence of Thomson was the appearance ofthe real Thomson from under the axioms and formulae his teachers hadgiven him. 

Men do not fail because they are human. They are not human enough. Failure comes from lack of life. Only the man who has formed opinionsof his own can have the courage of his convictions. Learning alonedoes not make a man strong. Strength in life will show itself inhelpfulness, will show itself in sympathy, in sacrifice. "Great men, "says Emerson, "feel that they are so by renouncing their selfishnessand falling back on what is humane. They beat with the pulse andbreathe with the lungs of nations. "

It is not enough to know truth; one must know men. It is not enough toknow men; one must be a man. Only he who can live truth can know it. Only he who can live truth can teach it. "He could talk men over, "says Carlyle of Mirabeau, "he could talk men over because he could actmen over. At bottom that was it. "

And at bottom this is the source of all power and service. Not what aman knows, or what he can say; but what is he? what can he can do? Notwhat he can do for his board and lodging, as the slave who is "hiredfor life"; but what can he do out of the fullness of his resources, thefullness of his helpfulness, the fullness of himself? The work theworld will not let die was never paid for--not in fame, not in money, not in power. 

The decadence of literature, of which much is said to-day, is not dueto the decadence of man. It is not the effect of the nerve strain ofover-wrought generations born too late in the dusk of the ages. Itsnature is this--that uncritical and untrained men have come into aheritage they have not earned. They will pay money to have theirfeeble fancy tickled. The decadence of literature is the struggle ofmountebanks to catch the public eye. There is money in the literatureof decay, and those who work for money have "verily their reward. " Butthese performances are not the work of men. They have no relation toliterature, or art, or human life. These are not in decadence becauseimitations are sold on street-corners or tossed into our laps onrailway trains. As well say that gold is in its decadence becausebrass can be burnished to look like it; or that the sun is in hisdotage because we have filled our gardens with Chinese lanterns. 

 "No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew. "

Literature has never been paid for. It has never asked the gold northe plaudits of the multitude. Job, and Hamlet, and Faust, and Lear, were never written to fill the pages of a Sunday newspaper. JohnMilton and John Bunyan were not publishers' hacks; nor were JohnHampden, John Bright, or Samuel Adams under pay as walking-delegates ofreform. 

No man was hired to find out that the world was round, or that thevalleys are worn down by water, or that the stars are suns. No man waspaid to burn at the stake or die on the cross that other men might befree to live. The sane, strong, brave, heroic souls of all ages werethe men who, in the natural order of things, have lived above allconsiderations of pay or glory. They have served not as slaves hopingfor reward, but as gods who would take no reward. Men could not rewardShakespeare, or Darwin, or Newton, or Helmholtz for their services anymore than we could pay the Lord for the use of His sunshine. From thesame inexhaustible divine reservoir it all comes--the service of thegreat man and the sunshine of God. 

 "Twice have I molded an image, And thrice outstretched my hand; Made one of day and one of night, And one of the salt sea strand One in a Judean manger, And one by Avon's stream; One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe. "

And in such image are men made every day, not only in Bethlehem or inStratford, not alone on the banks of the Nile or the Arno; but on theColumbia, or the Sacramento, or the San Francisquito, it may be, aswell. All over the earth, in this image, are the sane, and the sound, and the true. And when and where their lives are spent arisesgenerations of others like them, men in the true order. Not alone menin the "image of God, " but "gods in the likeness of men. "

It is to the training of the genuine man that the universities of theworld are devoted. They call for the higher sacrifice, the sacrificeof those who have powers not needed in the common struggle of life, andwho have, therefore, something over and beyond this struggle to give totheir fellows. Large or small, whatever the gift may be, the worldneeds it all, and to every good gift the world will respond athousand-fold. Strength begets strength, and wisdom leads to wisdom. "There is always room for the man of force, and he makes room formany. " It is the strong, wise, and good of the past who have made ourlives possible. It is the great human men, the "men in the naturalorder, " that have made it possible for "the plain, common men, " thatmake up civilization, to live, rather than merely to vegetate. 

We hear those among us sometimes who complain of the shortness of life, the smallness of truth, the limited stage on which man is forced toact. But the men who thus complain are not men who have filled thislittle stage with their action. The man who has learned to serve theLord never complains that his Master does not give him enough to do. The man who helps his fellow-men does not stand about with idle handsto find men worthy of his assistance. He who leads a worthy life nevervexes himself with the question as to whether life is worth living. 

We know that all our powers are products of the needs and duties of ourancestors. Wisdom too great to be translated into action is anabsurdity. For wisdom is only knowing what it is best to do next. Virtue is only doing it. Virtue and happiness have never been farapart from each other. To know and to do is the essence of the highestservice. Those the world has a right to honor are those who foundenough in the world to do. The fields are always white to theirharvest. 

Alexander the Great had conquered his neighbors in Greece and AsiaMinor, the only world he knew. Then he sighed for more worlds toconquer. But other worlds he knew nothing of lay all about him. Thesecrets of the rocks he had never suspected. Steam, electricity, thegrowth of trees, the fall of snow, --all these were mysteries to him. The only conquest he knew, the subjection of men's bodies, went but alittle way. All the men who in his lifetime knew the name of Alexanderthe Great could find encampment on the Palo Alto farm. The great worldof men in his day was beyond his knowledge. His world was a very smallone, and of this he had seen but a little corner. 

For the need of more worlds to conquer is no badge of strength. It isthe stamp of ignorance. It is the cry only of him who knows that thegreat earth about him still stands unconquered. No Lincoln ever sighedfor more nations to save; no Luther for more churches to purify; noDarwin that nature had not more hidden secrets which he might follow totheir depths; no Agassiz that the thoughts of God were all exhaustedbefore he was born. 

And now, a final word to you as scholars: Higher education means thehigher sacrifice. That you are taught to know is simply that you maydo. Knowing the truth signifies that you should do right. Knowing anddoing have value only as translated into justice and love. There is noman so strong as not to need your help. There is no man so weak thatyou cannot make him stronger. There is none so sick that you cannotbring him to the "gate called Beautiful. " There is no evil in theworld that you cannot help turn to goodness. "We could lift up thisland, " said Björnson of Norway, "we could lift up this land, if welifted as one. "

Therefore lift, and lift as one. You are strong enough and wiseenough. You shall seek strength and wisdom, that others through youmay be wiser and stronger. You shall seek your place to work as yourbasis for helpfulness. Others will make the place as good as youdeserve. If your lives are sacrificed in helping men, it is to themarket of the ages you carry your blood, not to the milk-market ofConcord town. The honest man will not "pledge himself in Germany toteach nothing which is not true. " Being true himself, he can teachnothing false. The more men of the true order there are in the world, the greater is the world's need of men. 

As you are men, so will your places in life be secure. Everyprofession is calling you. Every walk of life is waiting for youreffort. There will always be room for you, and each of you will makeroom for many. 

[1] Address to the Graduating Class, Leland Stanford Jr. University, May 21, 1896. 

 THE BUBBLES OF SÁKI. 

 In sad, sweet cadence Persian Omar sings The life of man that lasts but for a day; A phantom caravan that hastes away, On to the chaos of insensate things. 

 "The Eternal Sáki from that bowl hath poured Millions of bubbles like us and shall pour, " Thy life or mine, a half-unspoken word, A fleck of foam tossed on an unknown shore. 

 "When thou and I behind the veil are past, Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last? Which of our coming and departure heeds, As the seven seas shall heed a pebble cast. "

 "Then, my beloved, fill the cup that clears To-day of past regrets and future fears. " This is the only wisdom man can know, "I come like water, and like wind I go. "

 But tell me, Omar, hast thou said the whole? If such the bubbles that fill Sáki's bowl, How great is Sáki, whose least whisper calls Forth from the swirling mists a human soul!

 Omar, one word of thine is but a breath, A single cadence in thy perfect song; And as its measures softly flow along, A million cadences pass on to death. 

 Shall this one word withdraw itself in scorn, Because 't is not thy first, nor last, nor all-- Because 't is not the sole breath thou hast drawn, Nor yet the sweetest from thy lips let fall?

 I do rejoice that when "of Me and Thee" Men talk no longer, yet not less, but more, The Eternal Sáki still that bowl shall fill, And ever stronger, purer bubbles pour. 

 One little note in the Eternal Song, The Perfect Singer hath made place for me; And not one atom in earth's wondrous throng But shall be needful to Infinity.